


if god is in the lens

by shatteredhourglass



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Violence, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Learns To Be A Person Again, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint's Just Like 'Ah Yes This Is My Life Now', Deaf Clint Barton, Denial, Hand Jobs, M/M, Mostly On Bucky's Part, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Protective Steve Rogers, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 03:48:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19123954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatteredhourglass/pseuds/shatteredhourglass
Summary: The Asset pauses. He remembers the first few days after dragging St- dragging Captain America out of the water, the aimless emptiness that had filled him, with no mission and no knowledge of what to do next. He’d spent a week staring at the peeling wallpaper in a motel. There had been butterflies patterned on it. He hadn’t known what direction to go in next, because he was (is) scared of Captain America, and he didn’t want anything to do with Hydra, and he’d just… stopped. That’s when he realizes Barton isn’t going to move unless he gives the man a reason to move, something to do that isn’t related to a past he can’t remember or the threat of imminent death. (It’s been burned out of him, the Asset can relate.)A mission.He's leaning on the button to the microphone before he thinks about it. “Come with me and you can kill more of them.”





	if god is in the lens

**Author's Note:**

> I expected this to be like, ten k. I'm still shocked it's finished. Title is inspired by the Birds of Tokyo song Discoloured.
> 
> EDIT: the spacing thing happened again I'm so sorry

****1 - The Winter Soldier** **

 

 

 

“Hey, are you going to Melanie’s barbecue dinner on Thursday? I was going to go after my kid’s gymnastics class, but now I’m like, do I really want to spend four hours listening to her complain about her husband’s cooking skills?”  
  
“Yeah, I don’t know, man,” the other man replies, typing at his computer. He isn’t looking at the series of monitors spanning the wall in front of him. “I’ll probably be here for days, trying to fix all this shit. We’re understaffed to hell.”  
  
“Fucking Captain America,” the first man sighs, leaning up against a wall opposite the second. He scratches his own ass idly and glances at the locked door, turns back to his companion. “If SHIELD hadn’t gone down we’d be fine. Why can’t we just hire a sniper to take care of his ass? I miss the Winter Soldier. Life was easier with him taking everyone out. Shame he died in the whole SHIELD shebang.”  
  
“They’re working on it downstairs, aren’t they? Caught something useful in Bulgaria, apparently.”  
  
“Yeah, nah, Thompson came out at lunchtime without a thumb.”  
  
“Should’ve worn gloves. Man, I hate to say this, but I miss the Soldier. At least he was a little housebroken.”  
  
The first man sets his gun down on the desk, flops into a chair next to the second, and that’s when the Asset strikes. It’s too easy, really, to kick out the loose vent and drop from the ceiling, on top of the man at the computer. He doesn’t get a chance to scream or call for help before the Asset’s twisting his neck with a decisive crack. The body is dropped to the ground disinterestedly as the Asset takes a step off of the chair and onto the tiles with a thump of his boots. The other scrabbles for his gun, eyes wide, but the Asset is closer and knocks it out the way before advancing. He falls off the chair and onto the ground, scrambling backwards as he realizes there’s no way to get to the door and escape before he is caught. The Asset watches him impassively for a moment, not particularly interested in this nameless man but vaguely curious about what he plans to do next.  
  
What he plans to do, the Asset finds out after a few seconds, is urinate himself and then begin crying and begging for his life.  
  
It would be an unpleasant situation if the Asset actually felt emotions. As it is, he shoots the man in the head with his silenced pistol and then makes his way out of the security area. Now that’s taken care of, there’s no one to watch him on the security cameras as he begins planting the bomb systematically around the building. It’s not a large building like some of the other Hydra hideouts he’s been destroying, but it’s enough to have caught his interest. No handlers appear to stop him as he sets a timer on one, and he notes that there just aren’t enough Hydra employees left at this rate to do anything. He’d assume the building was abandoned, but the two security officers had mentioned a downstairs. The timer is checked again and he unholsters his pistol again and proceeds to the stairwell.  
  
There are no guards down here, either, although he catches a woman in a white lab coat as she’s walking out of the bathroom. She stares at him for a second, then sees him raising the gun in his hand and then barks, “stand _down_ , Asset!”  
  
He shoots her in the head too.  
  
There’s only two doors aside from the bathrooms, and he scans the first, only to find a laboratory of some sorts. He scans the desks for any information that might prove useful before also setting a charge down against the supporting wall. There’s a USB device on the desk that’s been left unattended, so he pockets it and moves to the lockers. There’s a suit in there that looks vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite pin down where he’s seen it, and it doesn’t serve any use to the Asset, so he leaves it. There’s also a few knives and a chain with two odd electronic contraptions he can’t place, which seem unusual, so he picks those up as well. No files on where to go next, which is fine because the Asset has already planned his next three bases to destroy. Satisfied with his loot, he exits the room and moves to the next one.  
  
Clearly the people in this facility weren’t warned of the Asset’s destruction spree, or even that he was alive, and the two scientists in this room don’t seem too concerned about security either, given the fact that they don’t even turn to look at him when he enters. He tilts his head when he realizes they’re in some sort of observation room, and the scientists are watching something on the other side of the glass. He can’t see from the angle he’s entered, but he pauses nonetheless. One of the scientists is taking notes down on a notepad and the other is fiddling with schematics on a hologram.  
  
“We shocked him enough to kill a horse,” the one with the notepad says, sounding frustrated. “Vitals show he’s unconscious, just get over there and strap him down, will you?”  
  
“Are you _sure_?”  
  
The woman doesn’t seem amused by the person speaking from beyond the glass. “For fuck’s sake, it’s a wonder he’s not dead yet. Just put him in so we can wipe him again, or I’ll put you in there.”  
  
“Maybe this is a waste of time,” the one looking at the hologram says tiredly. “Hydra’s dying, let’s just go home. We’ve already lost three guys from this, and countless from just trying to capture him. We were stupid to think we could just go ahead and _make_ another Winter Soldier, this is-”  
  
The Asset shoots them both before they have a chance to scream, hitting one woman in the throat. She gurgles, blood on her lips, and reaches for him desperately, as if he can help her. He takes mercy and shoots her again. It takes a minute to process what they’d said before he’d attacked them. Another… __him__? They don’t have the facilities to perfect cloning, surely. Still, he’s interested enough that he nudges one of the bodies aside with a leather-clad foot so he can look into the observation window. The man who’d been complaining from inside is in a suit presumably meant to protect him from the crumpled heap in the corner.  
  
The Asset can see messy blond hair, the delicate curve of bone under a bare back and black pants, and not much else, from the way the body is curled. He blinks and for a second he’s seeing the man on the Helicarrier (who he knows but he doesn’t know but he _does_ ), the blood and surge of fear and cold shock of the water.  
  
He blinks again and the moment’s gone, and the man has approached the person on the ground. He drags the limp body up and the Asset sees mottled bruises and scars, what looks like burn marks as well. The man begins to sit the blond in a chair the Asset had failed to notice previously (he’s malfunctioning, faulty, he’d be wiped if his handlers were alive to see this.) His eyes run over the metal arching towards the ceiling, the florescent lights and straps to hold him down, and he swallows. That’s… the chair. _His_ chair. ( _Screaming, the burning shock in his brain, don’t forget again, Barnes, three-two-five-five-seven-no, he can’t do it anymore, it hurts so much, please-_ ) He watches, frozen, as the blond man is laid in the chair and the Hydra operative leans down to begin strapping his legs in. He glances back up at the blond’s face helplessly and realizes he’s seen him before, in a file- Barton, Clinton Francis, born in Waverly, Iowa. SHIELD agent, not Hydra. Marksman. Present in the battle of New York.  
  
He realizes he should probably do something, but he’s unable to move ( _faulty, broken, report back to handlers immediately if experiencing any symptoms_.)  
  
Then Barton’s knee jerks and he kicks the man in the chin with a sickening crack, and the Asset stares as his eyes flick open, shockingly blue, and he twists out of the chair. The man lets out a pained noise and Barton’s hands grip his hair, pulling him down to the concrete, and smashes his skull into it. The man’s still gasping when he’s yanked back, so Barton does it again, and again. And again. The Asset is still unable to move, watching as the man’s face turns into a mess of gore and bone. When he kills people it’s effective, painless. This is emotional, vicious, it’s vengeance for the way he’s been treated at the hands of these people who have tortured him and the Asset is…  
  
He’s still staring when Barton drops the man’s head (not that it’s recognizable anymore) and drops to his knees. The Asset had been expecting him to pick the lock somehow, to break out and escape back to his friends. He wasn’t expecting the blond to just… stop. Barton doesn’t even look like he’s planning to arm himself in the case of more operatives, he’s just laying down there on the floor like he plans to take a nap.  
  
The Asset realizes he’s pushed the button to turn the microphone on. Traitorous hand. He speaks, for the first time in weeks, voice rough from disuse. “What are you doing.” It’s not a question.  
  
Barton’s eyes blink open again and he looks… blank. There’s nothing like the violent, bright energy he’d been emanating a few seconds ago. He had the appearance that reminded the Asset of the way he looks when he accidentally passes a mirror and makes the mistake of glancing that direction. “Sleeping.”  
  
“Don’t you want to escape? Go to… your friends?”  
  
“If I escaped, what would I do? I killed him. That was what I was going to do.”  
  
Barton rolls over like he’s finished with the conversation, but the Asset isn’t. He hadn’t even acknowledged the notion of his companions, which likely meant… he didn’t remember. _Wipe him again _,__ one of the scientists had said, so they’d taken his memories already. But not his free will, which was curious. Then again, his free will seems to extend to killing whatever tries to touch him in revenge and then going dormant again. The Asset’s sure even _he’s_ tried escaping before, at some point, and that’s what he’s doing now. The timer on his phone beeps insistently, informing him he only has ten minutes before the entire base is exploded. For some reason he can’t quite make himself walk away from Barton, who’s still smeared in blood and taking a nap next to a corpse.  
  
It’s none of his business. Barton is a risk, dangerous and lethal even before he’d been touched by Hydra, he can’t afford to endanger himself and lose sight of his mission- if the Asset is killed by Clint Barton he can’t destroy the rest of Hydra. He can’t. It jeopardizes his whole mission.  
  
“I’m unlocking the door,” he says into the microphone.  
  
The lock clicks open audibly. There’s no answer.  
  
“This place is going to blow up in eight minutes.”  
  
Nothing.  
  
The Asset pauses. He remembers the first few days after dragging St- dragging Captain America out of the water, the aimless emptiness that had filled him, with no mission and no knowledge of what to do next. He’d spent a week staring at the peeling wallpaper in a motel. There had been butterflies patterned on it. He hadn’t known what direction to go in next, because he was ( _is_ ) scared of Captain America, and he didn’t want anything to do with Hydra, and he’d just… stopped. That’s when he realizes Barton isn’t going to move unless he gives the man a reason to move, something to do that isn’t related to a past he can’t remember or the threat of imminent death. (It’s been burned out of him, the Asset can relate.)  
  
A mission.  
  
He's leaning on the button to the microphone before he thinks about it. “Come with me and you can kill more of them.”  
  
Maybe he can utilize that bloodthirstiness to save the man’s life. The Asset still doesn’t know why he’s doing this- there’s no reason, no use, no active function. He’s killed countless amounts of people, many who could have been far more useful than a wiped, disoriented Clinton Francis Barton. It’s illogical. Nonsensical. He hasn’t needed a partner for the last twenty bases and he doesn’t need one now. In fact, a second person could be a liability. Barton’s blue eyes are back on the window though, staring slightly past the Asset’s left shoulder because it’s one-way glass and he can’t actually see the Asset. Still, there’s a flicker of life there.  
  
“ _Them_?”  
  
“Hydra. The ones who did this. I know where they’re hiding.”  
  
“How do I know you’re not them as well, and this isn’t some sort of bullshit trick on your part?”  
  
Five minutes. “They did it to me too. I’m blowing up the place. Next one’s in Michigan. I have… plans. I’ll give you weapons, intel. Let you decide for yourself.”  
  
Barton looks unimpressed but he stands up nonetheless, shirtless and bare-footed, and the Asset thinks of the violet and black in the next room, decides it’s best not to have that conversation when they’re on a time limit. Still, he straightens up and waits as Barton makes his way through the door. He’s still got blood on him, but it doesn’t matter right now. Barton’s eyes flick up to his face, down to his boots, back up at his left arm, then to his face again. He holds out one hand and the Asset doesn’t hesitate before handing him the pistol. _Stupid_ , a voice in his head screams, and maybe he is. He’s just remembered that even if he wasn’t in close proximity, even if he had time to run, this is the man known for never missing a shot.  
  
He’s dead if Barton decides he’s lying.  
  
“My vehicle’s out there,” he says.  
  
Barton looks at him, visibly considering his options like he’s not sure if he wants to shoot or not. He's still shirtless and barefoot.  _Goddammit, it’s colder than the hinges of hell, where’s your coat, Rogers,_  he thinks- no, that’s not him, that’s the malfunctions- and the Asset’s pulling off his worn-soft leather jacket and holding it out to him. Barton goes from looking at him to staring at the jacket. The Asset doesn’t feel the cold, but they wouldn’t have had the resources to give him that kind of power. It’s snowing out there, and he just knows that Barton is going to get the flu or something stupid like that, and then who’s going to have to look after him?  
  
…maybe _he_ needs to get in the chair instead of his new ally. Why does he care if the man gets cold? He doesn’t care, not really, but there’s that tiny voice in his head again, insisting he act as if he does anyway. Barton looks up at him again, but there’s a little less focus this time, less razor-sharp clarity. The Assets remembers they’ve been shocking him repeatedly a few seconds before Barton lists to the side and then passes out. He’s close enough that the Asset just catches him with the left hand. He pauses until he remembers he has about two minutes before the base goes up in flames, so he hefts Barton over one shoulder and starts making his way up the stairs.  
  
He settles Barton in the car just as the first _boom_ echoes around the yard, far away that it doesn’t affect anything, and tries to ignore the way something warm settles in his stomach, looking at messy hair and parted lips. The Asset lays the jacket over the scars lacing Barton’s chest and reminds himself that it’s simply a mission, and a mission partner (that he doesn’t need or want).  
  
“ _Idiot_ ,” he says to himself, and it sounds so venomous he’s confused all over again.  
  
  
  
  
  
Barton doesn’t wake up for fourteen hours.  
  
He’d laid the man down on the only bed in the house, settled the covers up around his chin, and then gone back to cleaning out his guns. That had only taken a short amount of time, so he’d proceeded to reading the files that had been flushed out of SHIELD. The Asset tries not to do a thing part of him insists is ‘hovering’ in-between, but he still ends up standing in the doorway of the bedroom in the safehouse every twenty minutes on the dot. It’s just a coincidence that he lands on the file for Clinton (Clint) Francis Barton. He busies himself reading up on the shreds of his past- he has to stop, partially because he is checking on Clinton-Francis-Barton to make sure he’s not going into arrest or having a seizure, but he also loses time because he doesn’t know half the words. He should know, he should already know what a circus _is_ but it’s there and then it’s gone again just like everything else.  
  
It’s frustrating.  
  
At the twelve-hour mark he decides to read the files in the bedroom Barton’s sleeping in, and it doesn’t make sense to be watching an unconscious man like this but he’s doing it anyway. He only takes one knife with him, which also seems illogical. He’s trying to understand why, exactly, people like Clinton Francis Barton and the man-who-he-knows-but-doesn’t seem to think it’s a clever idea to take in people with extremely dangerous criminal pasts. The Asset has no doubt Captain America would take both of them in, if given a chance, and he’d feel no trepidation about it either. The Asset doesn’t know how he has survived this long.  
  
“Takin’ all the stupid with him,” the Asset mutters, and it comes out in an accent that isn’t how he speaks.  
  
He looks up and Barton’s watching him carefully, rolled onto his side with one hand on the pillow in front of his face. The Asset would be concerned about not seeing the other hand if he didn’t already know there were no weapons in the bed. Still, there’s no reaction from the man on the bed other than looking at him, so the Asset closes the lid of his laptop and sets it carefully on the bedside table. The little voice in his head is demanding he make some hot soup. He ignores it.  
  
“You said they did… what they did to me, to you,” Barton says after a moment.  
  
“Yes,” the Asset agrees.  
  
“Do you ever dream about a life that isn’t yours?”  
  
“All the time,” he says, the honesty something of a relief, and Barton’s lips quirk up in something that isn’t quite a smile.  
  
He sits up in the bed, the covers falling down in his lap, and the Asset notices he has the silhouette of a bird tattooed just on the upper curve of his hip. It’s something oddly human, a reminder that he’d been something else before he was… _this_. (It also buys into the possibility that the Asset was _also something else, which he doesn’t like very much.) When his eyes return to Barton’s face the little half-smile is gone and he’s looking down at his own hands like they’re alien to him, and maybe they are. There’s a large scar wrapping around his ring finger, and the skin’s paler in one spot that suggests there was a band on it at some point in the past. The Asset remembers reading something about a woman, seeing a picture of a blonde with a disapproving curl to her mouth.  
  
_ “Gear’s in the duffel bag,” the Asset says before he does something irrational like give into the urge to smooth down the part of Barton’s hair that’s sticking up towards the ceiling. He ignores the part of him that is relieved when the look that was on Barton’s face dissolves into something less emotional. “Should be something that fits. You can walk?”  
  
“I’m fine,” Barton says.  
  
 _Functioning to acceptable parameters _,__  the Asset confirms to himself as he watches the man slip out from under the covers and proceed to the aforementioned bag, shedding the bloodstained Hydra-issued pants as he went. There’s bruises, scarring, some burns, but nothing that could actively disrupt the mission. The Asset hasn’t collected a lot of clothing, choosing to mend what he has, but there are a few things he’s held onto for the last few months, one of which is the leather jacket he’s currently wearing. Barton takes a minute to scan the contents of the bag and then pulls out a pair of black pants that were nearly the same as the ones he’d been wearing previously. He then finds something dark grey and sleeveless, and over that goes the Asset’s spare tac vest. The Asset is still watching the flex and play of the muscles in Barton’s arms when he turns.  
  
“Boots are in the corner,” he says, not sure why he feels the urge to flee from that empty stare. “We leave in twenty minutes. Do you want weapons?”  
  
“I am the weapon,” Barton answers after a moment, looking blank.  
  
The Asset is starting to understand why they thought this was an effective person to replace him, but he’s also aware that Barton is human, breakable. Perhaps not easy to kill, certainly very dangerous, and yet the Asset is struck with the illogical urge to make him stay here where he can’t be attacked. Make him go back to the bed and pull the covers up around him. Safe, instead of lacing up his boots with empty efficiency to murder people with the Asset.  
  
But that doesn’t make sense, so instead he hands Barton a Glock and shows him the layout of the Hydra base in Michigan.  
  
  
  
  
  
This base is less empty than the one the Asset had discovered Barton in, they find out as they watch from the cover of the nearby forest and see the five guards standing out the front of the building. The Asset pulls the rifle from his back and twists into an easier position, lining up the closest man’s head in his sights. The sound of the shot is going to alert people to their presence. It’s- not irritating, he doesn’t feel irritated, but it impedes easy access and makes the mission more difficult, which is inconvenient. He’d hoped not to make a sound before actually entering the building so he would have the advantage. He goes to squeeze the trigger but is stopped immediately by Barton, who’s got a spark in his eyes.  
  
“What,” the Asset says, flat.  
  
“I have a better idea,” Barton replies, unfazed, and they must have done a truly terrible job of training him, because _he’s_ never interrupted his handlers or given his own opinion. (Or maybe he has. But only because he was in need of maintenance.)  
  
Still, the Asset is not a handler and neither of them realistically have any authority, so he lowers the rifle and waits. It’s not as if the man is incompetent, so he’s willing to listen to the idea. Barton’s hands land on the Asset’s thighs and he flinches, just enough that it’s noticeable. He hasn’t had hands on him since ( _your name is James Buchanan Barnes_ -) But then three of his knives are slipped out of their holsters and he’s watching with trepidation as Barton creeps a few meters away and rolls behind a stack of crates with a startling amount of grace. The Asset glances back at the guards and sees one checking his mobile phone, and another one looking around the opposite corner from where they are. He nods at Barton, but raises his rifle again in case this idea goes wrong.  
  
Barton climbs the roof.  
  
The Asset watches as he scales the wall like it is not a flat surface that would be nearly impossible for a normal person to traverse, and then swings up onto the roof, a dark, lethal figure in the orange afternoon glow. The knives are glinting in the sun, one in each hand and another between his teeth. He still isn’t entirely sure what Barton’s plan is, because he hadn’t deigned to share it, but he stays where he is as the dark shape approaches the ledge above the first four guards. The Asset watches with some puzzlement as Barton pulls something small and shiny out of the pocket of his vest and tosses it down, directly in front of the four guards standing there. When he looks through the scope of his rifle, it appears to be made of foil. _Useless_ , he thinks as he watches the guards peer down at it with what looks like confusion.  
  
Two of the knives sink into the guard’s necks and the Asset realizes belatedly, as Barton drops down silently and _yanks_ , that if they were looking down it was the right angle for severing the spinal column. But- he’d have to have thrown them directly _between_ the vertebrae, something that would be impossible even for the Asset. He stares as Barton pulls the knives out before twisting and stabbing into the side of one of the remaining guard’s throats before the other two fall to the ground, the spray of blood landing up one bruised cheekbone. The fourth one barely takes a step back before the second knife is jammed into his larynx. The guard drops with a silent crumple, the Asset’s enhanced hearing only picking up the soft thump of his knees hitting the ground.  
  
The fifth guard chooses that moment to come back around the corner, and the Asset realizes distantly that Barton’s too far away to stab and there’s no cover whatsoever near him. That’s not good. He raises his rifle to shoot at the same time the guard raises her gun, and then there’s a knife protruding from her throat. The gun hits the ground before her body does, and the Asset stares, lowering his rifle. Barton turns towards where he’s crouched and waits, looking impassive and not at all like he’d killed five fully armed guards with a ball of tinfoil and three knives. They weren’t even particularly large knives, really, and he’d done it without making any discernible noise.  
  
 _A machine made for killing. Silent, cooperative, and empty_ , the Asset remembers a handler saying once, with pride, and can’t quite figure out why the description now make him feel cold inside.  
  
He slings the rifle back over his shoulder and approaches Barton, who’s got a boot planted on one corpses’ chest as he uses the leverage to yank out the knife. The Asset pauses and Barton looks at him briefly before handing over the knife. He doesn’t return the other two, the Asset notes as he tucks that one back in its sheath after wiping the blood off. The Asset pushes open the front door and glances at Barton, who’s following, and hands him the bag of explosives, only keeping enough to take care of the lower areas. The plan is for Barton to take care of the main area, filled with various offices and security details, nothing particularly life-threatening or interesting, and the Asset will take the basement, which may have information or useful items.  
  
Barton slings the bag over one shoulder and doesn’t attempt to wipe the blood smeared on his hands. The Asset supposes there’s no point, but there’s something about it that’s unsettling in an abstract way.  
  
“Ventilation system,” Barton says. “Could be faster to set them in there.”  
  
The Asset takes a minute to think about the layout of the base. “Vents don’t reach the south-east corner. You’ll have to plant that one against the supporting wall.”  
  
“Mm. Yeah, that’s fine.”  
  
He watches as Barton looks up at the opening to the vents, and the grate screwed onto it. A minute passes, and then Barton looks back at him, considering. The Asset realizes he’s not going to actively ask for assistance and resists the urge to - _roll his eyes? What_ \- before he grasps part of the grate with his left hand and _pulls_. It comes off with a muted groan of bending metal, and he drops it onto the linoleum floor. Barton pulls himself up into the resulting gap and disappears silently, and the Asset wonders again, _what_ exactly he’s doing with this man. But at least the mission will be completed without any problems like the base in Wyoming (he’d been shot in the leg, and there were green lights everywhere that made him feel sick for no good reason).  
  
He turns and makes his way downstairs, only stopping to choke one guard and shoot another. Neither of them last long enough to raise the alarm.  
  
The basement level is reminiscent of the laboratories he’s been in before, but as he clears each room and eliminates each operative he finds, there’s no equipment he recognizes. Some part of him had been expecting the chair, the cryogenic tank and the probes, the electronics, but the rooms are largely empty of anything useful. He clicks through a few of the computers in the third room, but apart from an open game of Spider Solitaire, they seem to be void of any useful material. The Asset places down the charges in the spots he had already plotted out and starts thinking about the next base, somewhere in Iowa. He’s going to have to do more reconnaissance to figure out where exactly that one is.  
  
As he finishes affixing the last one to the wall, he notices a filing cabinet he hadn’t been aware of earlier ( _failure to be aware of his surroundings, malfunctioning, return to handlers for reset.)_  There’s a padlock on it, which seems quite low-budget for Hydra, but they are losing operatives and power at a rather rapid rate. The lock is mangled into a lump of useless metal as he crushed it under his hand, and he slides open the drawer expecting weaponry, equipment, information on the people running Hydra and ways to get to them. Instead he finds a thick file that’s singed on one corner, dirt smeared on it like it’s been carried through a lot. Thinking it might have something useful in it, the Asset lifts it out of the cabinet, only to see the label scrawled on it in black marker.  
  
 ** _ ** _BARNES, J. B._ ** _ ** __  
  
___-five five three two...one? No, three two five five, fuck you, get out of my head, James Buchanan Barnes, you’re Bucky Barnes and they can’t-  
  
_ _"Now, now,” a voice says, one that hurts worse than the poison in his veins and the splitting pain in his head. Round glasses, green screen, blood, so much blood and there’s a promise that it’s all going to go away soon, he’ll be free _-__ a hand lands on his shoulder and the Asset swings around wildly, nearly knocking the cabinet over, file still in his hands.  
  
Barton raises an eyebrow. “Are you… okay?”  
  
“Functioning to acceptable parameters,” the Asset answers, but his voice sounds _off_ somehow, and he’s clutching the file to his chest too hard. He should throw it away. Irrational. _Failing_. He’s __not__ functioning, that’s the problem, he doesn’t know what to do over the dread brewing in his gut and the way the back of his mind keeps echoing _that name._ Barton has obviously noticed something isn’t correct with him but he doesn’t comment on it, instead raising his other hand to display the phone in his hand, with the timer. Five minutes. They should get out of here before it’s too late- there’s no reason to stay anyway, there’s nothing of use here. He's going to take this file and destroy it, make sure no one sees it again.  
  
His head hurts.  
  
“Come on,” Barton says, and the way he says it is softer, like he’s being comforting.  
  
The Asset doesn’t need coaxing, he’s not a person, he doesn’t. He doesn’t. And yet when Barton tilts his head towards the open door and starts walking, the Asset follows, the file held tightly against his chest. They pass a few operatives running around helplessly and he watches blearily as Barton dispatches them, feeling like he’s in a daze. They make it to the stairs, and then back to the main floor. There are more bodies here, he notes distantly, and wonders how many Barton killed. Whether he’d kill them all without remorse if he remembered. Barton turns around as he walks, backwards so he can face the Asset as he moves.  
  
“I think I was-” he starts, looking confused.  
  
-but the Asset doesn’t get to hear it before there’s a sharp crackle of electricity and Barton’s collapsing with a shudder that makes something scream in the Asset’s head. Behind Barton’s form stands a Hydra operative in a full bodysuit, holding something that’s not dissimilar to an electrified cattle prod. The Asset can’t stop staring. It feels like his legs have turned to stone sometime in the last thirty seconds, and he’s still holding the files like a lifeline (like _his_ lifeline, like Bucky Barnes is enclosed inside it and he can find the man inside and get rid of him for good.)  
  
“Asset,” the voice behind the mask spits. “Submit or perish.”  
  
The cattle prod is swung at him with a startling amount of speed and he manages to move out of the way just enough that the breeze affects his hair. Immediately the operative is lunging at him, trying to knock him off-balance like he isn’t already spinning out of control. Still, the Asset manages to dodge the next swing and he grabs it with his gloved left hand, yanking it forward and making them stumble. They release the prod and take a swing at him and he blocks it with his forearm, ignoring the way the pained noise as their fist bounces off the steel. He punches them hard enough that there’s a crack, and they trip over Barton’s motionless body and fall to the ground with a groan.  
  
Shit, Barton. “Barton.” He doesn’t move.  
  
The Asset drops to a crouch to feel for a pulse, and something feels off, wrong, like when he got kicked in the stomach and threw up for an hour afterwards. He begins shaking one muscled shoulder insistently, despite the lack of response he receives. “ _Barton_. Get up.”  
  
“...whuh?”  
  
“Barton. We need to get out of here,” he says, and he sounds almost _panicked_ to his own ears. Why can’t he just leave this man to die? Why does it feel like his internal organs are rearranging themselves when those bleary blue eyes land on his face? Barton paws at his shoulder halfheartedly and then he blinks, suddenly aware.  
  
“The bombs,” he says to the Asset. “It’s going to blow up.”  
  
 _No, really?_ The Asset tries to haul Barton up with one arm, but the man ends up sliding back down to the floor. He can’t get a proper grip and it isn’t working. Barton’s not lucid enough to actually get his feet under him properly. The Asset needs both arms to get him up. But both arms means he has to put the file down- it’s too big to shove in the waistband of his pants, and the backpack with the bombs is gone, wherever Barton had put it. He looks down at the file, at the name scrawled in messy letters like the man it was about didn’t matter in the slightest. He weighs up the opportunity to discover more information about a man he doesn’t want to know and the life of this man, this reckless blond disaster.  
  
He looks down at Barton, the way his vest and shirt have ridden up to reveal that tattoo. He notices that the right wing is off, in the wrong position for the way the bird is laid out on his skin.  
  
In the end, it’s not much of a competition.  
  
“Have you considered just using a remote detonator?” Barton asks blearily as they’re driving away. “Could save some stress.”  
  
“Shut up,” he replies.  
  
  
  
  
  
“You’re bleeding,” he says as they enter the new safehouse.  
  
Barton doesn’t turn around. The Asset follows him in the door and secures the entrance before looking back at the blond. There’s no reaction. He watches Barton sit down on the dusty couch heavily and slump to the side, but he seems tired rather than in critical condition so the Asset’s- concern?- is settled. He sets down his bags and sits in a rickety chair at the dining table, resists the urge to bury his face in his hands. He doesn’t feel like he’s made an error, but he’s not supposed to make his own decisions so who knows?  
  
“Did you- are you injured?”  
  
Barton doesn’t answer.  
  
The Asset rises from his seat, feeling that same concern come back. He doesn’t like it- and how strange is that, that he doesn’t like things now? ( _Faulty. Malfunctioning. Wipe him until he gives up again. He always gives up eventually, you just have to persist. He is our Asset, our Winter Soldier._ ) He rounds the couch and finds Barton’s gaze fixed on something out the window. When he comes closer it switches to his face, and the focus in his eyes is sharp enough that the Asset crouches in front of him rather than acquiescing to the voice that demands he shake the man for a coherent response.  
  
“ _Barton_ ,” he says.  
  
“Why are you mouthing at m- oh.” Barton’s eyes go wide and his hands go up to his ears. The Asset watches as they come away with small black devices that remind him of an earpiece. One is blinking a red light repeatedly, and the other isn't lit up at all. Barton stares at them blankly. The Asset waits.  
  
“I’m… deaf,” Barton says quietly. “How did I- I _forgot_.”  
  
Forgotten. There seem to be a lot of forgotten things, lately. The Asset had forgotten, when faced with a file about James Barnes, that he’d been avoiding that very subject. That knowledge. He hadn’t wanted to know anything about the man on the bridge or what it all meant. Maybe when that handler had called him _weak_ he had been correct. One of Barton’s hands drifts back up to his ears, touching one vaguely. The look in his eyes is distant, now, cloudy like he’s seeing something else, something besides the Asset crouched in front of him.  
  
“I can’t hear anything without the hearing aids,” Barton says finally. “They must’ve been knocked out by the cattle prod.”  
  
That’s… inconvenient. The Asset looks at the hearing aids that don’t work and wonders if James Buchanan Barnes had know how to fix things like this. No intimate knowledge of electronics assaults his systems, so he doesn’t think so. Barton sighs and looks down at his feet, his expression a little lost. He hasn’t wiped the blood off of himself yet- neither has the Asset, though. There’s got to be something they can do about the hearing- without it, Barton isn’t functional for missions, he’s a liability, and then he might just… stop, the way he had in the basement where they’d wiped him.  
  
Wait. The basement.  
  
He’d been rummaging through the rooms, the _locker_ \- there was a locker with a suit in black and purple, with the arrows and the knives. He’d left the suit, grabbed the extra knives (that Barton had lifted from him almost immediately, he should’ve made the connection) and the- the strange violet electronics he hadn’t been able to place.  
  
He’d stolen Barton’s hearing aids from Hydra’s storage cabinets completely by accident.  
  
The Asset stands up and goes to his loot bag without pausing to try and explain what he’s doing. He finds the hearing aids tangled in a bag of wires, sees the little button and presses it experimentally. It lights up with a flicker of golden light and he nods, turns them off again before he goes back to the couch and presents them to Barton. It takes a minute for the flicker of recognition to come back to his eyes, and then the Asset places them upon Barton’s tense thigh. He watches the man look down at them and something in his facial expression _shifts_ , and then he’s taking them and putting them in his ears.  
  
The Asset sits, patient, and waits.  
  
“I was deaf… before,” Barton says, unsure. His eyes flick up to the Asset’s face and then to the side, like he’s seeing something else. “Before what?”  
  
The Asset breathes past the screams of dead men rattling around in his head. “You were. Before. You were a person. You were a man called Clinton Francis Barton. They took it from you.”  
  
“I was a…” Barton repeats, nearly inaudible.  
  
He stops. The air feels like it’s simmering, boiling hot and terrifying. The Asset hears the groan of the Helicarrier as it starts shutting down, the dirty blue water and the blue fabric of a suit under his fingers. He resists the urge to run and hide somewhere he can’t be found. Barton blinks, slowly.  
  
Then the screaming starts.  
  
Hours, many hours later, Barton collapses on the bed. The Asset looks at the new bruises colouring those biceps from where he had to hold him down and prevent Barton from injuring himself further, and then up to his face, where he just looked despairing and empty. The Asset doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t think he can fix it, unless there’s some way to time travel and save the man from being captured in the first place. He can’t do that, though, so he just sits there and watches. Barton’s eyes close briefly, and the Asset catches the sound of him sighing before he opens them again and stares at the ceiling.  
  
“I don’t like this,” Barton whispers.  
  
 _Me either, pal,_ the voice in his head replies, and for once he doesn’t tell it to stop. “It’s okay. Not to like it.”  
  
“Is it?”  
  
The Asset looks back at Barton, who’s still watching the ceiling. He looks up and finds nothing of interest, so maybe whatever the man’s seeing is inside his mind somewhere. The Asset wonders if Barton’s head also feels like his brain is slowly being scooped out piece by piece- or maybe it’s being put back in, and that’s why it hurts so much. His arm whirs impatiently and he unclenches his fist, watches the plates resettle- __c_ auterize the stump, you idiots, I do not want to test if he can die from blood loss before I have even started my work. Do you want to work out in the snow instead, perhaps? Because I can arrange that if you do not start listening to me when I talk.  
  
_ _Bucky screams as the smell of burning meat assaults his senses. He can feel the searing heat and the pain, but it’s like a far-off dream, indistinct and hard to focus on. He yanks at his restrains with his right hand- they snap like they’re made of straw, and he thinks no, this isn’t right. A man advances on him with a needle and he twists out of the way, as much as he can through the dizziness. It doesn’t work, and the man pushes his round glasses up his nose and smiles, like he’s happy to see Bucky.  
  
_ _He can’t feel the needle when it slips under his skin. “Prepare him. I have the machinery ready.”  
  
_ _"No, no, no,” Bucky breathes, paralyzed by fear and pain and the drugs they’ve been pumping him with.  
  
_ _He’s scared.  
  
_ When the Asset looks up again, Barton is asleep.  
  
  
  
  
  
“There’s one coming up on your three o’clock,” Barton says over comms, and the Asset turns, shoots the man in the face.  
  
This base is a mess of half-constructed catwalks and a strange tower-like build, with no separate floors or sections to work mechanically through. Likely it was something that had started to be made before the fall of SHIELD and now it’s been left partially built, although there’s still a few people left behind. He steps over the operative’s body and raises his left arm in time to block a spray of bullets, ducks down behind a sheet of metal. The familiar sound of his rifle firing sounds and there’s screams as Barton begins picking off the ones he can see from his vantage point at the top of the tower. The Asset takes a moment to stop and breathe- he’d never needed to before, but Barton’s taking care of them, it’s okay.  
  
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected Barton to do when he woke up in the morning, maybe return to his friends or demand more information on himself, have another attempt to trigger more memory sequences. Instead the Asset had watched him push the covers away and put his boots and vest back on, ask where the next base was. Barton hadn’t even brought it up, and the Asset wondered if he was afraid. Afraid of remembering, or learning to be something else again. Either way, the Asset had just looked at the shadows under his eyes and handed him the rifle, letting him cover from above while the Asset himself made his way to the machinery he remembered could be triggered to explode.  
  
“Clear,” Barton says.  
  
“Thanks,” the Asset replies, and then pauses. Why is he thanking the man for carrying out the objective he’d been set to do? No one thanked _him_.  
  
He shakes his head and stands up from the steel, noting that the bodies on the ground had all been shot in vital places without the slightest error. Maybe Barton had forgotten yesterday, or he just didn’t care. The Asset steps over a corpse with a bullet hole directly in the center of their forehead and spots the computers with the Hydra logo displayed in proud, glowing green, and ignores the way his stomach turns. It takes a few seconds for the scanner to recognize his hand and let him into the inner workings, and then he starts studying the files for anything of use.  
  
“There was a girl,” Barton says suddenly, but his voice sounds distant. “Red hair.”  
  
The Widow. “What do you remember about her?”  
  
The Asset continues mechanically browsing each folder he finds in the computer’s hard drive as Barton goes silent, but the silence seems thoughtful rather than the screaming pain of yesterday. He glances over a file containing information on operatives working at the building site, sets it aside and looks at schematics for some sort of taser-like device. There’s information alongside the diagrams in Japanese here, and it takes a minute of staring before the words start to make sense to him. He puts that file aside and continues scrolling.  
  
“She always smelled like vanilla,” Barton mutters.  
  
It’s not particularly useful information, but it’s evidence that he’s remembering things.  
  
And if he’s remembering things… why is he still here?  
  
The Asset sets the self-destruct on the computer but doesn’t activate it yet, turning so he can look up at where Barton’s on the highest catwalk. He can see the man crouching upon the slim railing rather than standing securely, which is strange and illogical, but as long as he isn’t planning on jumping the Asset supposes it doesn’t matter. Barton is trained, he knows not to fall off of something that high without countermeasures. He can’t see Barton’s expression from this distance, but he can see the tense stance, the way he’s not moving. He waits to see if there’s going to be anything else said about what he’s remembering about himself, but there’s nothing.  
  
“I’m going to press the button,” he says.  
  
Barton doesn’t say anything to that, either, but the Asset sees him sling the rifle over his back and start walking towards the entrance to the roof, so he turns back and activates the self-destruct sequence. The computer begins counting down immediately with a piercing whine, and he grimaces at it before he turns and starts making his way up the stairs to the closest exit. Before he gets there, the doorknob twists from the other side and the Asset presses himself into a crevice in the wall, listens.  
  
“I don’t know what to do, Nat,” the man from the bridge says, and he sounds tired.  
  
His companion replies to him, a soft female voice who’s words are drowned out by the sound of the Asset’s metal fist hitting him again and again. He can’t stop, oh god, it won’t _stop_. Distantly, he’s aware the sight of that blue uniform slowly staining red with blood is just a memory playing inside his head, but the shock, the bone-deep horror is overwhelming him again. The Asset shudders, squeezes himself tighter into the corner like it would keep him safe from the voice that’s getting closer and closer. Distantly, he’s aware of the taste of blood in his mouth, realizes he’s bitten the inside of his cheek. ( _Faulty. Dysfunctional. Scared._ )  
  
“I just m- what’s that computer doing?”  
  
“Let’s check it out.”  
  
The Asset bites harder as they pass him, stays silent even when the sight of the shield makes him want to scream. The woman with him is the Black Widow, soft curls of red hair and black leather. Barton’s Black Widow. _Good_ , he thinks, and even in his head it sounds a little desperate. She’s dangerous, she won’t let anything bad happen. They’re facing the computer system, looking at the timer blinking down in red lights when there’s an audible crash from above. Both of them look up immediately, and the Asset realizes there’s no Hydra operatives left alive, which leaves one option to who made the noise.  
  
“Clint?” The Widow says, sounding puzzled.  
  
She breaks into a run and _he_ follows a second later, scaling the steps to find Barton. For Barton to find them.  
  
He remembered her, and once they’re reunited Barton can go back to being a person again.  
  
The Asset uses the distraction as an opening to push his shaking knees into action, ducks down and pushes the exit door open silently. There’s no shouting from behind him, no calling for him to return, so he’s gotten away successfully. He runs to the jeep he’d hidden down a dirt path nearby, sits in the driver’s seat and tries to breathe past the knot in his throat. He’s holding onto the wheel too tightly, he realizes, the foam and metal crushed under his clenched fingers. Still, he can’t quite make himself let it go. Barton’s gone, and that’s a good thing, that’s good for him, for all of them, the Asset certainly doesn’t have any use for the man, he’s done plenty of missions before this by himself and it doesn’t matter that-  
  
“Start the car,” Barton hisses, climbing in through the passenger-side window rather than opening the door.  
  
The Asset stares at him. “You’re supposed to be…”  
  
Barton stays silent for a moment, clearly waiting for the Asset to start driving, but he can’t. It doesn’t make _sense_. He must have known who the Black Widow was, he remembered her and he’d obviously paused to watch them when they’d entered, had shown his face before escaping. Why is he here, with the Asset? His expression is… complicated, something the Asset can’t read, doesn’t know how to read. He just doesn’t _understand_. The answers were right there, with these people, and he’d just. Barton turns his head and looks out the window, at the base where his friends are, where he’s apparently just left them. It’s not the blank expression he’d had when the Asset had found him, but it’s not particularly colourful either.  
  
The sunlight catches Barton’s hair, turning it golden. He doesn’t look back at the Asset as he speaks.“If I’m Clint Barton, what does that make you?”  
  
“I’m.” He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.  
  
“We’d better move before they find us,” Barton says when some minutes have passed by. The Asset’s still gripping the steering wheel too hard. (He doesn’t know the answer to the question. He doesn’t _want_ to know the answer to the question, not that one.)  
  
He starts the car.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
The Asset looks up from the book in his hands. He’s been looking at the same page for three hours, but he hadn’t realized that Barton was even awake. They’d gone to their respective spots in the house shortly after arriving; which meant that Barton had kicked off his gear and curled up in the blankets and the Asset had returned to his seat by the bed, with a book he couldn’t even remember picking up. Barton meets his gaze with an assessing stare that makes him feel like he’s being tested, and when Barton shakes his head a little bit he’s not sure if he passes or not.  
  
“You knew who I was,” Barton says thoughtfully.  
  
“Yes,” the Asset agrees.  
  
“How?”  
  
“Files, mostly,” he answers. “Lots of information online right now.”  
  
“You didn’t know him? Me?”  
  
“No.”  
  
The Asset sets down the book- he hasn’t been reading it, it serves no useful purpose to him -and reaches for his computer instead, lifting the lid and setting about unlocking the device. Barton stays where he is, passive now there aren’t any Hydra operatives or otherwise in the vicinity. The Asset glances up and sees him just lying there, and there’s something soft about his expression as he watches the Asset back that makes his chest feel warm. But… standing in the sunlight warm, not the uncertain shocking burn he gets when he sees the man from the bridge.  
  
It’s… _nice_.  
  
He’s not sure why it’s nice, exactly, but that’s what his mind had supplied him with, so he supposes he has to live with it. He pulls up the search browser and his bookmarks to find the pages the Black Widow had published on Agent Barton, Clinton Francis. It takes him a few seconds to locate and then the information is filling the screen in neat blocks, from information on birth to kill count. There’s a lot here, although the Asset is fairly sure this isn’t the entirety of the story. He scrolls down until he finds early history, scans for anecdotes he can supply to Barton.  
  
“You had a brother,” he starts. Barton blinks at him. “His name was Barney.”  
  
There’s no screaming this time, no collapse the way he had the first time. He just looks like he might have a persistent headache, and the fist that’s visible clenches on the pillow. The Asset supposes that it’s easier once you _know_ you’ve forgotten the life you led before. Maybe the release had helped, somehow. He certainly looks more human than he had when the Asset had taken him in. There’s expressions, subtle but certainly visible nonetheless.  
  
“He shot me in the stomach,” Barton says. “I nearly bled out in a ditch.”  
  
The Asset doesn’t know what to say to that, so he returns his gaze to the files. There’s no anger in the man’s voice, no shock, just acceptance. His brother shot him and that was a fact. Still, he seems to remember details, so he’s recalling things, no matter how indistinct. The Asset scrolls down a few pages, looking for something that might be more positive (why does it matter whether the memories are positive or not? He doesn’t care. Barton probably doesn’t. And yet the Asset is still picturing him curled in a ditch, hand over the wound and mud caked on his cheek, trying to drag himself out for help as his brother walks away.)  
  
“You lived in the circus,” he suggests instead.  
  
“I shot a man with an arrow and it went through and pinned him to a pillar,” Barton returns. “Have you ever watched them try to yank away and it hurts them more?”  
  
That’s not a question about his past. That’s a question about… him, not about Clint Barton. He doesn’t get asked questions. _Are you okay_ , Barton had asked earlier, like he was just another person. Like they were the same. They’re not, not really, because the Asset is… he looks up from the computer and Barton’s just watching him still, hand tucked up under his cheek now. His eyes look almost violet in the light filtering through the curtain.  
  
“Not with an arrow,” he answers when he realizes Barton’s waiting. “A steel pipe, once. Knives. Spear.”  
  
“You remember it clearly?”  
  
“Sometimes,” he says, and Barton gives him that not-quite smile.  
  
- _”James,” the girl sitting in his lap whines.  
  
_ _Bucky sighs and holds the brown curls he’s sectioned out in his left hand before he reaches for the brush with his right. Rebecca lets out an impatient huffs but stays put, fingers tapping on the couch. Bucky resists the urge to threaten her to stay put, because they’re supposed to be ready before their Ma gets home and she’s not going to be happy if Becca’s hair is messy again. They’d paid for that last week, and Bucky could still hear the crack of the wooden spoon if he concentrated hard enough. He pulls the hair into a loop, ties it carefully. It looks neat enough, the months of practice are paying off. Bucky lets his sister go and she jumps up, patters off to the cramped kitchen to find herself a snack.  
  
_ _He’s got to get to the docks, he’s going to be late now, shit.  
  
_ _"You work too hard, Buck,” Steve says softly, and when Bucky looks up to argue Steve’s standing in front of him, smiling. “Let me help you.”  
  
_ _Bucky opens his mouth to retort, but Steve’s slender artist hands are reaching up to his face and it begins peeling like it’s rotting from the inside, revealing the crimson skull underneath. The bombs crash outside, alarms screeching and Steve’s grabbing him by the throat, lifting him off the ground and he’s scrabbling with hands that are cold steel, covered in blood, Steve’s blood-  
  
_ “Hey.”  
  
The Asset blinks and realizes his right hand is pressed up against Barton’s chest like he’s trying to push him away. There’s a heartbeat under his palm, steady and strong, and when he looks up those nearly-violet blue eyes are watching him calmly, not frightened in the least by having an instrument of death pressed against his body. The Asset realizes there’s a hand on his shoulder, wonders how long it’s been there. The lighting’s changed, so the sun’s moved from the position he’d last registered it in. ( _He’s malfunctioning again. Still._ ) His fingers curl against the fabric between his skin and Barton’s and it’s surprisingly warm.  
  
“I need to unpack the guns,” he rasps, standing up. Barton’s hand falls off his shoulder and he’s not sure why that makes him feel a sense of loss.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Where’s the next base?”  
  
“Don’t know,” the Asset grunts. “Somewhere.”  
  
Barton doesn’t answer him then, just shuffles up the bed so his back is pressed against the dusty headboard. The Asset watches him out the corner of his eye for a moment, just to see what he’s doing, but the man’s just sitting there, hands folded in his lap. After a minute Barton pulls out one of the knives he’d lifted from the Asset and tosses it up into the air, catches it, tosses it again. It’s done with the kind of idle grace that’s only possible with an expert, and the Asset finds himself watching the twist and gleam of the knife as it goes up and down. It should be dangerous, really, and it’s unnecessary, but oddly mesmerizing nonetheless.  
  
“Why are you doing that?”  
  
“Don’t know,” Barton answers, echoing his earlier words.  
  
“Why didn’t you stay with the Widow?”  
  
“You’ve really gotten stuck on that, haven’t you,” he replies without approaching the question. The knife is caught and not thrown up again as Barton turns to regard him with something knowing in his expression. The Asset feels like he’s been caught doing something wrong, even though that makes no sense. He just doesn’t _understand_. Barton snorts, more to himself than at the Asset. He’s not sure what that means, either.  
  
“I just. I don’t understand why you’re here,” he says. “You remember things. People. You know you’re not… you’re not…”  
  
Barton raises an eyebrow. “Are you okay? You seem a little… out of it.”  
  
“No sustained injuries,” the Asset replies automatically. “Functioning to acceptable parameters.”  
  
Barton seems to take that in for a moment, and the stare turns assessing again. “When’s the last time you slept? You keep drifting off.”  
  
“I don’t sleep,” he says. “Unnecessary.”  
  
He can’t recall needing to sleep before now. Exhaustion was not something he’d actively experienced- not that he’s experienced a lot. He’s not human enough to need something like that. But then again, he hasn’t been out in the field for this long either. Missions he could remember spanned hours, days, weeks, but never months. The Asset thinks it’s been quite a few months since he’d begun systematically destroying each Hydra base one by one. Maybe he does need rest, now that he’s not being put in the cryochamber between missions.  
  
“Not on the chair,” Barton says, and the Asset realizes he’s listing to the left a little.  
  
On the floor, then? He sets his computer aside and stands up, preparing to settle himself on the wooden panels, when he catches the look displayed on Barton’s face. No, that’s wrong as well, for some unknown reason. He looks at Barton for clues related to where he’s supposed to be and whatever the man sees on his face has him sighing at the Asset. He watches as Barton shifts to the left and peels back the blankets, leaving a space big enough for him on the bed.  
  
“You need sleep to function,” Barton reasons when the Asset doesn’t move. “If you pass out during a mission, you die. Get over here.”  
  
The words themselves sound like an order, but the way Barton’s patting the mattress gently to try and summon the Asset to his side makes it seem like there aren’t any consequences no matter what he does. It’s not like the man actually has any authority, and the Asset is done taking orders, but somehow he still ends up gingerly sitting on the bed. It’s… soft, and strange, for some reason. He can feel Barton’s body heat from where their shoulders are nearly touching.  
  
“Lying down generally helps.”  
  
“If I lie down then I won’t be prepared if there’s…” he pauses. What’s he staying alert for? Hydra thinks he’s dead, and the Avengers only show up at Hydra bases. They certainly have no idea about this dingy little safehouse. There’s no active threat coming for him.  
  
“What if I stay on guard?” Barton suggests.  
  
When the Asset turns his head the blond is brandishing the Glock he’d been given. It takes him a few seconds to assess the ammunition and weigh it in his grip, and then he settles more firmly against the headboard, eyes bright and alert. The Asset has no doubt that Barton could eliminate any threats that appear, given his competence on the field, and it’s enough that he slides a little down the bed so his cheek is pressed against the pillow. It smells like bleach and he stares at Barton’s black-clad thighs, a knife holster high on his hip. His head is quiet in a way it normally isn’t, as he feels some of the tension bleed out from his muscles.  
  
Barton will take care of things. He can do this, and then he’ll read some more of that file. Help him remember. Barton’s _safe_.  
  
“Next watch is mine,” he mumbles in that voice that isn’t his, before the darkness curls around him.  
  
 _ _-_ ”Soldier! Stand down.”  
  
_ _Bucky spits blood at the woman who’s trying to bark orders at him. It lands on her cheek and she grimaces, goes to wipe it off. Arnim Zola stands in the background, turned away to work on whatever he’s gotten to inject Bucky with next. The steel arm weighs down Bucky’s shoulder, and pulls him off balance when he tries to lunge at her. She steps out of the way neatly, watches as he collapses to the ground, barely managing to get his hands in front of his face before it hits the concrete. He’s cold, right down to his bones, and it’s not just the arm. The fingers of his left hand flex experimentally, scraping on the floor- no, that’s not his hand, that’s an abomination.  
  
_ _He’s an abomination.  
  
_ _He coughs and it starts a fit that catches in his lungs, sends him into a ball on the ground. The woman’s still standing there, watching him silently. He uncurls from the ball and gets to his feet on trembling legs, still listing to the left. If he moves quickly enough, he could make it out the door. And if he makes it out the door he can run, find Steve, get help. Steve’s good, he’s made of light and righteous fury and he’ll make this all stop if Bucky can find him.  
  
_ _"First that unbearably messy mission and now this,” Zola says. “You were behaving so well, my pet. Are your memories bothering you?”  
  
_ _“Steve,” Bucky repeats to himself. “Gotta find Steve.”  
  
_ _"You think Captain Rogers will want to see you? After you killed all those people? Your sisters?”  
  
_ _“I didn’t- what?”  
  
_ _Zola circles around Bucky and stops in front of him. He doesn’t have any needles in his hands, just a sympathetic smile on his face. The hatred that surges through Bucky makes him want to snap Zola’s neck under his fingers, but there’s also shock. He hasn’t killed anyone. What? His- his sisters? They were back home, safe, not here in the middle of nowhere. Not anywhere Zola could get his hands on them. The blood is still in his mouth, coppery taste filling his senses.  
  
_ _His freezing seems to be enough encouragement for Zola, though, because he rummages in the pockets of his long white coat, producing a small white square. A photograph, Bucky recognizes distantly as it’s presented to him with the kind of pride that makes him feel sick to his stomach. Because that’s undoubtedly him- the red star painted on his shoulder, knife in his fist, fringe partially over the dead look in his eyes (it’s getting long, don’t Nazis believe in haircuts?).  
  
_ _The girl on the floor, covered in her own blood, though, that’s…  
  
_ _"No,” Bucky says, past the flood of despair sweeping over him. “Oh god, no.”  
  
_ _"What would Steve Rogers say, do you think?” Zola asks. “He is Captain America, you know. A hero. A good man. And you are a killer.”  
  
_ _“I-” Bucky starts. Swallows hard.  
  
_ _“I can make it go away,” Zola says in a kind voice. There are tears in Bucky’s eyes, but he’s only vaguely aware of them. He can’t stop staring at the photograph that is still being steadily presented to him. The metal arm feels even heavier, all of a sudden, like it’s weighed down by the deaths he doesn’t remember causing. Maybe Zola’s right. Maybe he is a killer. A monster. It’d be easier to just let it all fall away, wouldn’t it? And then he wouldn’t have to face the hatred on Steve’s face when he has to explain what they’ve done to him.  
  
_ _"You’ll kill me?”  
  
_ _“I will make it all disappear,” Zola says. “You will not have to suffer anymore.”  
  
_ _“Okay,” Bucky croaks. “That’s… okay.”  
  
_ _“To the chair then, Sergeant,” he answers, gesturing behind them. Bucky turns and makes his way back to it heavily, ignoring the woman standing there, still seeing the photograph behind his eyelids. He leans back in the chair and stares at the blank ceiling, wonders if Steve would look for him if he knew that Bucky was alive. Bucky doesn’t want him to find him, not anymore. Maybe they can be best friends again in the next life.  
  
_ _He still screams when the first shock hits him.  
  
_ The Asset jerks awake, adrenaline flooding his veins. He doesn’t think, just grabs for the knife and swings it, stabs down. The intruder has already rolled out of the way and sprung to his feet on the other side of the bed, and the Asset goes to follow. He’s stopped by the sheets twisted around his legs and boots, and it makes him pause long enough that the man across from him stops as well, lowers his gun. The lighting isn’t very good- it’s around five in the morning, just enough to catch a glimpse of a shirtless chest, a dark shape on the curve of a hip too big for a mole.  
  
Bird tattoo.  
  
He stops.  
  
“You were talking in your sleep,” Barton says, apparently not that concerned about the knife embedded in the mattress where he’d been sitting a few seconds ago. The Asset has no doubt the man would’ve been dead if not for his own fast reflexes. Barton tucks the Glock in the waistband of his pants and goes back to what he was doing. The Asset realizes there’s medical supplies spread on the other side of the bed, and Barton has butterfly stitches along his collarbone. He was just casually patching himself up next to the Asset, like he felt safe on the bed next to him. The mattress is still warm. His heartbeat is almost deafening.  
  
“Next base is in West Virginia,” the Asset says.  
  
  
  
  
  
They kill everyone in the place without fanfare, no one alerted to their presence quickly enough to even attempt an escape, and it dulls down some of the noise in rattling around in his head. The only useful items to be found are some files on where other bases might be. The Asset reads them, memorizes the important things, and then sets them alight, unwilling to let anyone follow their trail. Barton stays close to him this time, like he’s keeping watch on the Asset himself. The Asset watches the papers burn for a while before he checks the remote detonator is working and then gestures for Barton to follow him out the door.  
  
“What happens when we run out of things to blow up?”  
  
The Asset doesn’t answer. Barton doesn’t persist when silence falls over them again, and the Asset hears his footsteps speed enough so they’re walking alongside each other instead of Barton trailing behind. The plan, not that it was much of a plan, was for the man to remember things and then go back, to his people and his life, instead of going on a prolonged murder spree. At the rate he was recovering things, the Asset presumed he’d be fine to go back long before they ran out of bases.  
  
There’s a slam of a steel door up ahead and Barton whips into action, twisting into a dark doorway. The Asset follows after a minute, listening and waiting. He’s fairly certain that the Avengers shouldn’t be this close, and when he hears voices he doesn’t recognize, he relaxes a minute amount. Barton is lining up where they will be stepping into view, prepared to shoot, and he does the same.  
  
Barton’s target goes down without a sound, but when the Asset shoots there’s an unmistakable ping of bullet against metal, and he pulls back behind the door seconds before bullets hit it. Barton drops the Glock without pausing and grabs a knife, throwing it. There’s a thunk as the knife hits the man’s gun and then a stream of swearing. It’s been knocked out of his hand, evidently, and Barton doesn’t waste a second in advancing on the man. The Asset looks around the corner of the door and sees a man in head-to-toe body armour, a mask over his face. There’s a cross drawn on his chest, which doesn’t seem like a Hydra thing.  
  
The man catches Barton’s first punch like it’s nothing.“Clint! It’s been a while. Don’t tell me you’ve been the one doing all this.”  
  
The Asset watches for a moment as they fight. There’s not enough space between the man’s strange armour to throw or shoot, at least, not for _his_ skills. Barton twists out of the way of a blow and tries to kick him, but the armour is too strong. They know each other, apparently, but the way the man is fighting back with no qualms suggests they weren’t allies. Barton gets behind him for a headlock but the man moves too fast, slamming his elbow into the blond’s nose. Barton staggers away, blood on his fingers, and the man kicks his legs out. He hits the ground with a sickening thunk, and then he’s being punched.  
  
The Asset punches him in the head.  
  
Whatever his mask is made of is strong enough that there’s only a worrying clang, but his head swivels back to regard the Asset and he stops punching Barton, who looks unconscious. The man stands up to face the Asset properly, and his eyes are alight with an unnerving kind of glee. It’s enough that he doesn’t get his neck snapped immediately.  
  
“ _Barnes_ ,” he says in a voice that creeps down the Asset’s spine. “You survived, pretty boy? Good. That’s excellent news. I could use a soldier after that business with the Helicarriers, you know.”  
  
The Asset pauses. “You’re Hydra.”  
  
“Not anymore,” the man replies. “Forgot your old buddy Brock Rumlow already? I guess your memory’s probably like Swiss cheese at this point, huh.”  
  
The Asset strikes, punching him squarely in the chest with the metal arm. It pushes him back a few steps with the force, but doesn’t actually damage him. Rumlow laughs as if the attack is filling him with delight and strikes back. The Asset blocks his fist, doesn’t even move, but Rumlow’s already swinging with his other fist and it whips past his head, narrowly missing his ear. The world fades into a mechanical haze of block, strike, dodge and move, and this man is nothing like the other Hydra operatives they’ve managed to kill. Rumlow actually possesses skill and the Asset doesn’t have the benefit of appearing from the shadows.  
  
Rumlow’s fist lands on the Asset’s cheek, knocks him back a step, and it’s enough to knock him off-balance. He takes a few steps back, breathing hard. His face stings. This is why he doesn’t sleep; it’s made him slower, dysfunctional. Not that he wasn’t already faulty before that. Rumlow laughs at him, and the Asset has the distinct feeling he’s grinning behind that mask.  
  
He shuffles around and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper, but he isn’t attacking and there’s a pause.  
  
“Желание,” he says, and the Asset’s blood runs cold. He can’t move. “Семнадцать. Ржа-”  
  
Rumlow’s voice breaks off into a choking noise and he drops the paper, grasps at the back of his neck. There’s a thump as he falls to his knees, and the Asset raises his eyes to Barton, who’s standing over Rumlow, blood dripping from his nose down to his chin. He kicks Rumlow with one boot and the man falls to the ground, a knife handle visible in the gap between his mask and body armour. Barton kicks him again, until he stops moving, and then he spits on Rumlow’s mask. The Asset stares at the blood splattered on the white cross, looks back up at Barton, who’s _angry_ , reminds him of a book he once read about angels made of fire and light. He can almost see the wings arching above his shoulders when he blinks.  
  
“I’ve had enough of this place,” Barton says roughly.  
  
 _He’s not dead_ , the Asset thinks distantly, tries to ignore the wave of relief.  
  
He leaves the knife where it is, approaches the Asset. Even with the amount of blows he had taken, the worst of the damage just seems to be a broken nose, because his eyes are clear when he glances over the Asset’s body. Checking for damage, the same way the Asset is doing to him. He’s not sure what that means. Barton picks up his gun and tucks it into the back of his pants, and the Asset shakes his head, tries to breathe past the lump in his throat.  
  
“Let’s get out of here,” he says.  
  
Barton falls into step with him easily, making no attempt to wipe the blood coating his lips and chin. “He called you Barnes. That’s your name?”  
  
“No,” he replies.  
  
“What __is__ your name? You know mine’s Clint. Surely you know yours.”  
  
“Don’t have one,” he says flatly.  
  
His face hurts.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Not sleeping tonight?” Barton asks, and there’s something in his tone that sounds dangerous, makes the Asset’s heart beat a little faster.  
  
They’re standing by the dining table in the main room, tactical gear stripped while they check for wounds. He hasn’t sustained any damage that is cause for concern, and neither has his partner, although he’s a little suspicious about concussions. People get concussions sometimes. Barton’s wiped the blood off of his face, but there’s an impressive amount of bruising beginning to colour on his face. He looks tired, bruised and battered in a way that makes the Asset think he’s remembered something he didn’t want to know. Perhaps he’s just angry about Rumlow.  
  
Barton’s still watching him, arms crossed. Waiting for a reply.  
  
“No,” he answers.  
  
“You know,” Barton starts, and there’s that dangerous voice again, “I remember more when I’m unconscious. They come back in chunks while I sleep.”  
  
“Okay,” he says.  
  
“Why aren’t you making any effort to remember things? Because that’s what you’re doing.”  
  
“Nothing to remember,” he replies flatly.  
  
“Bull _shit_ ,” Barton says, with venom. “It’s called denial. You told me my name and read me files and try to pawn me off on other people and then you run off and pretend you’ve always been this. It’s easier, isn’t it? Pretending.”  
  
“I’m. I’m not,” he starts, and his voice shakes.  
  
“It’s not like you don’t have the flashbacks,” Barton says. “I’ve _caught_ you having them.”  
  
“No,” he says, voice raising. “Barton, I…”  
  
“Clint. It’s _Clint_ , because I actually face up to my problems.”  
  
“I don’t-”  
  
“If I have to remember, then so do you, you fucking hypocrite,” Barton- _Clint_ snaps at him.  
  
Something else snaps.  
  
“You’re a fucking superhero who killed Hydra! If I’m _him_ then I have to live with this! I have to wake up every day and know that I was a person, a totally normal human being with family and friends, and I still murdered all those people,” he shouts back, his eyes burning. “I have to remember it all. There were _kids_. Tiny babies who hadn’t done anything but exist and they made me kill them just to fuckin’ prove a point. How can I look my best friend in the eye when I can still hear their screaming _every time I close my goddamn eyes?_ ”  
  
He’s right, it _is_ easier to just be a monster.  
  
Clint’s still looking at him, but he’s just standing there, completely motionless. There’s no movement from either of them for a long pause, silent over the frantic thump of his heart. He realizes his face is wet, although there’s no rain anywhere to be found, or any sources of water whatsoever. Strange. It’s out of place enough that he stops abruptly, raises his shaking right hand up to touch it (the left hand isn’t shaking, but the servers are whining at him like it wants to.)  
  
It’s warm.  
  
He takes in a shuddering breath that catches in his lungs and wonders where he’s going to go from here, whether he can disappear quickly enough, before Clint tells them where he is. He feels overwhelmed, suffocated, and the white noise in his head won’t ease up. He drops his hand from his face- considers making a break for the door and then Clint’s advancing on him, fast enough that he closes his eyes so he doesn’t see the blow coming. That way he can’t block it automatically. He doesn’t mean to tense up (he’s never tensed up when handlers hit him, why is he starting now?)  
  
Arms wrap around him and he’s pulled against a warm, solid wall that he’s vaguely aware is Clint but can’t quite process. He inhales shakily and fingers wind into the back of his hair, guide his face down so his nose is pressing into the worn cotton of Clint’s shirt. The shrieking stops abruptly, replaced by something rapidly approaching shock. Oh. _Oh_. He’s being hugged. Clint’s hand is still fisted in his hair, and it doesn’t seem like he plans to let go anytime soon.  
  
“It’s okay, not to like it,” Clint says quietly, echoing what the Asset had said to him a few days ago. “It’s okay to be scared of this. It’s also okay to be Bucky Barnes.”  
  
“I’m the Winter Soldier,” he answers, the words cracked and barely audible.  
  
“You can be both,” Clint says. “That’s okay too.”  
  
Bucky sucks in a breath and then _cries _,__ for the first time since 1949.  
  
  
  
  
  
 _“You can move now, Buck.”  
  
_ _“You sure?” Bucky asks the question even as he’s already stretching, arms over his head.  
  
_ _It’s nice, the kind of slow when nothing is happening but it’s nice, a reprieve from his busy life, and he lets out a yawn. The afternoon sun’s filtering in through their single window, right in the spot he’s posing for Steve in. Steve himself snorts at Bucky stretching like a cat, curled up in his corner with sketchbook and pencils in hand. Bucky scratches a hand through his hair and lets his fringe fall on his face, sighs. He’s going back down to the docks tomorrow, and it’s unlikely he’ll get another day off for a while.  
  
_ _“What do you think?”  
  
_ _“Looks good, Rogers,” he says, looking at the tiny details in graphite, the angle of his jaw. It’s amazing, is what it is, and for the thousandth time he wishes people would appreciate the skill this took to make. “Must be the subject matter, hey?”  
  
_ _Steve snorts out a tiny little laugh and Bucky grins at him, delighted.  
  
_ He blinks awake and the sensation of a warm body pressed against his makes him pause for long enough that he doesn’t reach for a knife before he remembers where he is.  
  
Then again, he’s not sure he _could_ get a knife like this. Clint’s thigh is hooked over his hip and he’s curled around Bucky with an arm around his shoulder, holding him close with Bucky’s face pressed against his throat. The position shouldn’t be particularly comfortable but feels safe, for some reason. He breathes out a sigh and realizes his fingers are twisted in Clint’s shirt like he’d tried to unconsciously make sure the man couldn’t leave. Last night feels like a blur, smudged and messy, but he remembers Clint leading him to the bed and pulling off his boots.  
  
 _It’s okay_ , he’d said in a soft voice, and Bucky had been so exhausted he’d gone without a fuss.  
  
His eyes hurt. His everything hurts.  
  
He doesn’t remember the last time he’s been this close with someone. Probably for a mission somewhere. Something stupid like that. Seducing a Hydra target, maybe. He’s not sure if they made him do that. Clint’s still got a speck of blood on his throat, right below the blond stubble he hasn’t shaved since they’ve been together. It’s not as scratchy as his own face, oddly enough. Clint shifts against him, grunts and then he’s squeezing Bucky a little closer. He’s awake, then- that makes this position even stranger, really.  
  
“This is a terrible way to choke someone,” he croaks, voice rusty.  
  
Clint snorts like it was a funny joke and not a terrible one, fingers flexing against Bucky’s shoulder blade. They both know that if Clint wanted him dead it would’ve already happened. He’s had plenty of opportunities and he hasn’t taken a single one. Bucky’s fairly sure he’s not going anywhere. “Just making sure you can’t escape in case I have to talk some sense into you again. Can’t run away like this.”  
  
“Think I’m done with running for now,” he answers, presses his nose against Clint’s throat. Clint’s thigh shifts against his hip a little, but there’s no complaints. He still smells like blood and dirt, but it doesn’t matter. It’s nice. He’s not entirely sure whether it’s a normal thing for people to do, but it’s nice. It’s also easier to talk to Clint when he doesn’t have to look him in the eye. _I’m tired_ , he thinks to himself, for the first time in a long time, lets himself feel it. “You’re right, I can’t keep doing this forever.”  
  
“Acceptance is the first step,” Clint says. “You accept what’s happened and then you can move on from it. A therapist said that to me once- I never saw her again, after that.”  
  
“You remember a lot,” Bucky notes. “You… called me Bucky.”  
  
He feels Clint swallow. “Before I got caught, I was looking for you. Only knew your name, though, and what you looked like. You had shorter hair in the picture they gave me, y’know? Didn’t look quite this much like a hobo.”  
  
He doesn’t reply. Clint’s fingers are still tracing idle patterns on his back, over the material of his shirt. Part of him’s vibrating with the need to check the perimeter, load up his guns and shoot something until it stops moving, tear something apart, but it’s not worth it. For once the noise in his head has faded into a dull buzz and he’s going to take the reprieve while he can. He wonders what a hobo is, exactly.  
  
“I don’t remember as much as you think I do,” Clint continues. There’s no sadness in his voice, just acknowledgement. “I remember some things, but a lot of it just feels like muscle memory. Like this.”  
  
That’s fair. He’s not sure he _feels_ like Bucky Barnes yet, even if he knows he is. “I remember too much, sometimes.”  
  
“So, what, you were just suppressing it through sheer willpower? I can’t decide if you’re tragic or impressive.”  
  
“Like you said last night, it’s… easier, not to remember. It’s been coming all back for months, I just blocked it off,” he admits quietly. “I started remembering things the minute I saw S- when I saw-”  
  
Bucky stops, can’t quite get the name past his teeth. It gets hooked in his throat like barbed wire, spiking pain through him until he stops trying and sighs instead. He remembers lying like this with someone else, once, the ratty mattress and the shivering as he tried desperately to pile more blankets on top of them. He’d been the protector then, the well-adjusted one. Watching over his family and his friends and whoever he’d taken under his wing. Then he’d been the opposite of that, for a long time. He’s not sure what he counts as anymore. Both, he supposes. Neither.  
  
Something bangs in the distance that he immediately identifies as the neighbour’s trashcan and Clint unhooks himself from Bucky with an impressive amount of speed, twisting to his feet with gun already in hand. Bucky reconsiders his earlier thought about Clint being more well-adjusted. Still, being idle isn’t something he’s used to, so he gets up as well. Clint seems to take in his lack of urgency and lowers the gun slightly, although he still looks ready to fire at any moment.  
  
“I suppose violence and destruction isn’t an acceptable coping method if we’re both going to work on not being killing machines,” he says as he trails behind Bucky to the main room.  
  
“I’m still a killing machine,” Bucky answers, frowning.  
  
Clint raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to try to be more than that, though?”  
  
“I can try,” he agrees, and Clint gives him that little pleased half-smile. Bucky’s stomach twists a little at the sight. Now he doesn’t have that dead look in his eye, he’s suddenly aware that Clint’s kind of beautiful. Tragic, in a way, trails of bodies in his wake and something haunted in his expression, but he’s still trying.  
  
He’s trying to get better, trying to remember how to _be_ better, and it makes Bucky want to try as well.  
  
There’s still a map spread out on the table. The corners are held down by empty cups and Bucky picks one up and watches the paper curl inwards before he fills the mug with water. He looks back at the map, at the red crosses marked all over it. Clint’s right, but he doesn’t know where to go from here. Clint looks down at the cups with a strange expression on his face and his brow furrowed like he’s thinking hard. Trying to remember something, maybe. Bucky waits.  
  
“We should go get coffee,” Clint says finally. And that’s- a little disappointing, really. He’d been expecting something a little more elaborate than that from Clint’s expression.  
  
“Coffee?” Bucky repeats, skeptical.  
  
“Coffee,” Clint agrees.  
  
  
  
  
The coffee is okay. Bucky still doesn’t understand the significance of the drink, but when they stop at a diner and the woman there pours them both a cup, Clint lets out a sigh like the world has been righted again. Bucky curls his hands around the cup and tries to absorb the heat from the coffee. It only registers distantly from his left hand, and he ends up watching the light refract off the metal. A minute later their food arrives and Bucky occupies himself with eating something that isn’t ninety percent sludge.  
  
It’s… different.  
  
Bucky supposes that even if it isn’t relevant to anything in particular, it’s nice being around people that aren’t trying to kill him for once. There’s a man in the corner who nodded at them when they came in the door, and the solitary waitress greeted them cheerfully enough. It makes him feel _human_ , and maybe that’s what Clint was up to all along.  
  
“I think I’m in love,” Clint says reverently as the woman refills his cup.  
  
She smiles at him, clearly amused by the scruffy blond man steadily depleting her coffee supply. Clint seems to be delighted by being here, some of the tension bleeding out of his skin as he pokes at a fried egg with his fork. Bucky wonders if his comfort zone used to lie in places like this, rather than empty houses and Hydra laboratories. It’s certainly less stressful, although they picked a spot with a good vantage point if they were to be attacked, and with a view of the car park and their vehicle.  
  
Bucky chews his bacon and looks over at the television screen they have mounted on the wall. It’s a news channel, the volume muted but subtitles on. The video shows a grassy expanse with three figures on it, standing in front of the carcass of what looks like a giant squid. The subtitles write over them for a few minutes and then the camera zooms in, revealing a man with grey wings and a woman with red hair. The third person is someone he’s not sure he’s seen before, a shorter man in ripped shorts and a leather jacket that looked like it might have belonged to the woman.  
  
 _The Avengers save the day once again,_ the subtitles announce, and Bucky releases the woman is the Black Widow. The winged man is Sam Wilson, who he’d… kicked off the Helicarrier. Bucky takes a moment to feel glad that he hadn’t killed him from that fall. He’s slaughtered enough innocent people. The television continues describing the battle in detail and he loses interest, looks back down at his empty plate.  
  
Clint’s still drinking his coffee cheerfully, and when Bucky glances up at him he realizes there’s a smear of dried blood flaking off of his bicep. That’s… not very good, if they want to stay unnoticed. He thinks for a moment and then dips a napkin into his glass of water (why had they given him water _and_ coffee?) and reaches across the table to swipe at it. Clint doesn’t even flinch, which is a miracle given how jumpy he is, but he does turn his head to regard Bucky as he does it.  
  
Bucky wonders if this is the first time he’s willingly touched someone without causing them harm since 1945. Clint blinks at him, then looks down at the blood on his napkin. He shrugs and goes back to drinking his coffee after a moment, apparently unbothered. Bucky supposes blood isn’t that much of a shock given their histories. He glances back at the television and there’s a blurry video of something called ‘The Battle of New York’ playing on the screen. The Widow’s onscreen again, along with what looks like a robot in red and gold, which is curious.  
  
Then he sees a flash of black and purple falling from a building, bow in hand. His breath catches as he watches Hawkeye shoot the grappling arrow, landing it perfectly and swinging into the side of the building with surprising grace and a shatter of glass. It’s too blurry for anyone else in the diner to make the connection, but the man on the screen and the one in front of him are undoubtedly the same.  
  
He’s reminded suddenly that Clint was an Avenger. He was a superhero before this. Even if he doesn’t remember it, there are people who do. People who _know_ Hawkeye. He hasn’t lived in anonymity and the shadows the way that the Winter Soldier has. He looks up at Clint, who’s eyeing off the waitress again with a predatory stare like he’s planning to jump her for the coffeepot.  
  
“Aren’t you worried about being noticed? Recognized?”  
  
Clint lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “It’s not like I’m Tony Stark. No one will recognize me in civilian clothes. Aren’t you worried about being noticed?”  
  
“Why would anyone notice _me_?”  
  
“I mean, the metal arm could just _maybe_ be a problem,” Clint starts, and Bucky raises an eyebrow, “but that might also contribute.”  
  
He gestures up at the television and Bucky turns to see the headline ‘Captain America Gone AWOL’ with footage of a man in a leather jacket with a cap pulled low over his face. The news reporter goes on to say that he’s been spotted in twelve different states over the last three months, leaving a trail from Montana to Michigan and then lastly, in West Virginia, never in his suit. A red line is shown on a map of Captain America sightings and Bucky grimaces. The reporter onscreen theorizes that he might be going to see the world after the events with SHIELD’s collapse.  
  
Bucky knows better than that. Captain America isn’t just going on a happy little adventure, he’s going on a _hunt_. A hunt for the person who nearly killed him on multiple occasions and just barely managed to stop before he died. It’s like the man has a death wish. God, what an idiot. He lets out a heavy sigh and Clint looks back at him, one eyebrow raised.  
  
“I’m guessing that’s your trail?”  
  
“Yeah,” Bucky agrees reluctantly. “Someone’s helping him.”  
  
“Well, lucky for you we’re not fucking with Hydra anymore, which means he won’t have a glaringly noticeable line of bodies and explosions to follow,” Clint says, unconcerned. “Hiding in plain sight works, when you’re not being too conspicuous. We should probably buy hats. Hoodies, maybe.”  
  
“Hats?”  
  
Clint shrugs. “I might shave. Find civilian clothes that fit a little better. Haircut?”  
  
Bucky casts his eyes down to the sleeveless shirt Clint’s been wearing since Bucky offered it to him. Technically he was going to use it as a rag, and that’s why it had been in the duffel bag, because it was a little small. Impossible for him to wear, for sure, but it was even tight on Clint, leaving every inch of muscle outlined in dark grey. Clint lets out a yawn and stretches, and Bucky’s eyes are drawn up to the curve of solid muscle in his arms instead. He’s not entirely sure why he can’t drag his eyes away.  
  
“So? To the mall, then?"  
  
His face feels too warm. “What are we going to do, where we’re going to need to be hiding in plain sight?”  
  
“I have some ideas,” Clint says. “Clothes first, dastardly plots later.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“I thought we were trying to be inconspicuous,” Bucky says dryly as Clint emerges from the store with a black plastic bag.  
  
“I like purple,” Clint replies with a shrug, pushing the sleeves of the flannel up his elbows.  
  
It’s a shade that can only be described as horrifyingly eye-searing neon. Luckily for Bucky and his retinas the rest of the outfit is just plain black, somehow just barely less tight than the shirt he’d borrowed. Clint just likes having his clothes squeeze him, then. Bucky shoves his left hand further into his jacket, watches the stream of people wandering past him. None of them give him or his companion more than a cursory glance before they move on, and he lets out a sigh. Clint had been right, no one cared about them. Clint scratches at his chin, thoughtful for a moment before he gestures for Bucky to follow and sets off down the rows of shops.  
  
They end up in a public bathroom, where Clint empties out the contents of his bag onto the sink and stares at it contemplatively. Bucky finds a convenient ‘Closed For Cleaning’ sign and hangs it on the door before he leans up against the opposite wall.  
  
He watches as Clint pulls out a pair of scissors and begins deftly snipping at his own hair. It’s a darker blond at the roots, curiously, and it’s interesting to watch the half-flat knotted mess turn into something short and sharp, reminiscent of the pictures Bucky had seen on the internet. Hydra really hadn’t taken care of him. At least Bucky looked somewhat functional when they had sent him out. Clint turns and gives him a sly grin as he’s shaving- it’s not anything that should provoke a reaction but Bucky takes in the blade against his sharp jawline and the amused glint in his eyes and it feels like his lungs fall out. Clint goes back to shaving a second later and the feeling disappears. Strange.  
  
“Did you want to…” Clint holds up the scissors, snips them in the air demonstratively.  
  
Bucky shakes his head vehemently. He’s not ready to see _that_ in the mirror yet. But then again, it’ll be easier for people that have seen him as the Winter Soldier to make the connection. Shit. Clint shrugs, gives him a thoughtful look like he’s picked up on that line of thought and then puts the scissors back in his bag. The shaving paraphernalia follows a second later and then Clint rummages in a smaller bag, makes a triumphant noise like he’s gotten an idea. He approaches Bucky cheerfully, guides him in front of the mirror.  
  
“I’m guessing you don’t want to get it wet,” Clint says, and Bucky nods. The threat of cold water doesn’t leave him with fond memories.  
  
Fingers wind through his hair, gently pulling at knots, and then Clint’s spraying something sweet-smelling. It’s strange, the way anyone touching him without causing harm is, but there’s also something warm curling in his stomach when he remembers it’s Clint playing with his hair. He’s combing it now, soft enough that it’s barely noticeable. Bucky glances up at the mirror, sees blue eyes that look lost and realizes it’s him. He hasn’t actually looked in a mirror for a while. His hair’s brushing his shoulders now, dark brown wisps that curl slightly at the ends.  
  
“Okay?” Clint asks, quiet.  
  
“Yeah,” Bucky answers.  
  
“What if we try something that isn’t… nineteen-hundreds-Barnes or Winter Soldier-esque. Something different,” Clint says.  
  
It’s more like he’s muttering to himself than to Bucky, and well. He __had__ read Bucky’s mind, apparently. That, or he was just weirdly intuitive, which was a more likely possibility. Clint had already picked up on most of his problems without being told, it seemed to be a running theme with him. Bucky watches as Clint gathers his hair up into a short ponytail, pulls a purple tie out of nowhere and holds it there. Most of his fringe escapes immediately, dropping to graze his jaw, and Clint snorts but ties it up anyway.  
  
“It’s fine,” Bucky says, and Clint pokes his head around to look in the mirror properly.  
  
Bucky’s expecting some sort of comment, a snarky one, but Clint just blinks rapidly and then coughs, turning to pack away his assorted paraphernalia. Bucky watches the cleaning with vague confusion, and then Clint’s pulling a black cap down over his face and gesturing for them to leave. Bucky wonders what the point of the haircut was if he was just going to hide it under a hat anyway. They make their way out of the bathroom quickly, startling the actual cleaner who lets out with a “ _hey_ -” before they’re disappearing into the crowd, too quick for him to chase them down.  
  
When they get to the second floor of the mall Clint slows down a fraction, looking around like he’s searching for something in particular. Bucky ends up just watching him as he wanders from storefront to storefront, mentally cataloging the little sway when he walks, the way he taps his fingers against his thigh like he’s itching to hold onto something. They’re still concealing weapons from head to toe, but it’s different to actually having the weight in your hands. Bucky sympathizes.  
  
“What are we actually doing?” Bucky asks.  
  
“I had an idea,” Clint says, sounding distracted. “But I need a- oh, there it is, the fucker.”  
  
He stops in front of a place with wooden planks covering part of the window. It looks dingy and badly-kept, the lighting more of a faint yellow glow than actual lights. The title states that the place is called ‘Sal’s.’ At least, that’s what Bucky thinks it says (it looks hand-painted, but quite badly hand-painted, unfortunately.) Still, Clint seems interested in it, so when he enters the store Bucky follows, glancing around warily for any sign of foul play.  
  
The only person in the store is a woman who looks old enough to crumble into ash at any moment, but Bucky knows better than to trust that, given that he’s in his nineties himself. She’s behind a desk near the front, doing a crossword in a book with a feather pen. The boxes around her desk are teeming with stacks upon stacks of dusty books and old memorabilia. He glances around and there’s no sign of Clint, the man having already disappeared amongst the shelves. Bucky holds back the urge to sneeze on everything. When she looks up at him blearily he freezes, unsure of how to hold himself now someone’s actively watching him. What are the chances of someone in their eighties knowing who the Winter Soldier is?  
  
“Hello, dear,” she says finally, smiling at him. “Looking for something in particular?”  
  
“No,” he says automatically. “I’m just… waiting.”  
  
She seems unaffected by his abrupt manner. “Oh, you’re with the nice blond boy? How cute.”  
  
Bucky wouldn’t call Clint ‘nice’ or ‘cute’ after seeing him massacre Hydra operatives with the kind of brutal efficiency villains dream about, but he supposes that the man is indeed _blond_. He shifts on his feet a little, nervous as the woman closes her book and leans forward. Bucky hopes like hell she’s too old to have seen the television footage of the Winter Soldier, and hasn’t heard the seen the photos of Captain America and his Commandos. There’s no recognition in those cloudy brown eyes though, and she just smiles at him some more.  
  
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen him. He’s such a sweet one,” she comments.  
  
Bucky glances at the stacks where Clint had disappeared. He’s considering running away but part of him insists that’s rude. God, he hasn’t cared about being polite for a long time, this is all Clint’s fault. “You know him?”  
  
“Never caught his name, but he comes back every now and then,” she answers. “Always has time to talk to an old woman and peruse her wares. He always looked lonely, though. It’s nice that someone’s finally picked him up.”  
  
 _Quite literally,_ Bucky thinks, remembering the way he’d slung Clint over his shoulder.  
  
The woman who he’d guess is Sal tilts her head at him. “How long have you two been together?”  
  
“I… I’m not sure. A few weeks, maybe,” he says hesitantly. Truthfully, Bucky doesn’t have any clue how long it’s been since he picked up Clint. It could’ve been a year. He’s fairly sure it _hasn’t_ been a year, but he’s not entirely sure. There’s always that chance when time is as broken up as it is for him. Sal doesn’t seem particularly offended by his lack of memory, though, letting out a laugh and clapping delightedly at him.  
  
“So cute,” she says, looking pleased.  
  
Bucky has no idea what she’s talking about. He’s about to question her further when Clint appears, dust smeared across his black cap. There’s a book clasped in his hand, one that looks about as old as Bucky is, but there’s a smile on his face and a bounce in his step when he sets it down in front of Sal. They make small talk as she rings up the book for him- Bucky has no clue if it’s expensive or not, because he doesn’t understand prices anymore, but he seems happy. Sal puts it in a bag and Clint takes it cheerfully, waving as he heads for the door, Bucky following closely behind.  
  
“Have fun with your boyfriend,” she calls, and Clint goes an odd shade of pink.  
  
“ _What did you_ , er- what did she say to you?”  
  
“Said you were nice. Asked how long we’d been together,” Bucky answers. “I couldn’t remember when I found you.”  
  
“Right,” Clint says, nods to himself as they start going down the stairs. Neither of them wanted to be anywhere near the escalator, and they hadn’t even needed to communicate to decide on the steps instead. Bucky looks at Clint and sees his face is still faintly flushed. He starts to think that maybe he’s done something wrong. It’s certainly possible, he isn’t at his best with conversation skills. Clint stops halfway down the staircase and turns to him, bag still in one hand. “She thought we were _dating_ , Bucky.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Banging. Doing the do. Knocking boots. Showing the fifty states. Planting the parsnip. Batter dipping the corn dog.” Bucky stares at him because _what the fuck?_ “I’m- she thought we were _involved_.”  
  
Clint makes a motion with his hand that’s- “oh. _Oh_. I didn’t. I didn't realize.”  
  
“I know,” Clint says, dropping his head back against the wall, and Bucky snorts. “Oh my _god_. Are you laughing at me, Barnes? First you start an illicit relationship with me without my knowledge and now you mock my embarrassment? You should be ashamed of yourself.”  
  
He points accusingly and Bucky laughs.  
  
It’s a strange feeling. He likes it.  
  
  
  
  
  
 _-”Please,” the man begs, blood in his eyes, down his face. “Not my daughter, anyone but her, have mercy. I’ll give you the documents! Money! Everything you could wish for!”  
  
_ _He raises the gun, presses it against the woman’s forehead. She’s crying, but quietly- like she doesn’t want to show any weakness, the tears falling down to dampen her high shirt collar. There’s a crackle of flames from above them, where the others had set fire to his bedroom and office, destroying whatever they could lay their hands upon. The girl swallows, looks up at him with defiant eyes. She’s trying not to look afraid. Her father’s still begging for her life, holding onto her pale hand desperately like that’s going to protect her somehow.  
  
_ _“What if I- if I trade her? Pretty young girl, all for you, for her life and mine,” the man wheedles, and Bucky shoots him directly in the eye.  
  
_ _The daughter flinches, turns away from him even as he’s pulling the mask away from his face, bending down to look her in the face. “Run.”  
  
_ _“I- what?”  
  
_ _“Before they find you,” he says urgently. He can hear them walking down the stairs already, the heavy clunk of boots. They don’t have time. “Run and keep running.”  
  
_ _She doesn’t dispute, just stares at him with wide eyes before she stumbles to her feet and runs to the back door, disappearing into the night. Bucky looks down at the man’s dead body and grits his teeth, picking up the mask and pulling it back over his mouth. The handlers reach the bottom of the stairs as he’s shooting at the open front door. Distract them, mislead them so she has time to run.  
  
_ _“What the fuck happened to the girl? Why isn’t she dead, Asset? Shit, he’s malfunctioning again, take him back to base for a wipe,” the leader says, anger vivid in his voice, and Bucky’s biting the inside of his cheek, blood heavy and rusted in his mouth-  
  
_ “-Bucky?”  
  
He blinks open his eyes and Clint’s sitting across from him at the table. It’s silent in the safehouse, apart from the faint chirping of the wild birds outside. His right hand’s on Bucky’s left, and the sensors pick up the warmth radiating from him. He blinks again, trying to get the world in focus again and Clint tilts his head, squeezes his hand briefly before he leans back. Bucky misses it immediately, and then tells himself off for doing so.  
  
“Flashback?”  
  
“...yeah,” Bucky answers. He can still taste the blood. “Wasn’t one of the really bad ones, though.”  
  
“When we were driving back I remembered a woman I fought once who kept trying to vomit acid on me,” Clint says conversationally, getting up and wandering to the kitchen area. Bucky’s silently relieved he wasn’t making a big deal of it. But then again, why would he? He’s Clint. “It still sucks even if it isn’t a vivid horror story. You want a beer?”  
  
“Not really,” he replies.  
  
Clint shrugs and twists the cap off of his beer, then moves over to the couch. Bucky watches him sprawl out with vague interest, still trying to push off the memories filtering through his head. Clint flicks the dusty television on but leaves it muted, his free hand scratching at one hearing aid. He watches whatever’s playing on the screen for a minute and then grimaces and gestures for Bucky to come closer instead. It takes a moment for Bucky to remember how to move and then he’s making his way to Clint, sitting down gingerly as the couch creaks.  
  
“For you,” Clint says simply as he sets down the book from Sal’s between them. “I remembered it being there when I visited once, thought I could find it again.”  
  
“You were looking for a gift for me?”  
  
Clint doesn’t reply verbally, just lifts one shoulder in a shrug as Bucky picks up the book. It feels like it’s going to fall apart in his hands and he lifts it carefully, sets it back down in his lap. _The Stories of The Howling Commandos - Tales Told By The Men Themselves,_ it says in formal gold lettering that’s been chipped away by age and use. __Oh__. It creaks when he opens the cover, goes to read the inscription written on the inside. _-I wrote over the things that weren’t right. J Morita _.__ Bucky looks up at Clint but he’s watching the television again, the look in his eyes suggesting he’s far away in his mind.  
  
Bucky looks back down at the book. He’s got a lot of questions - how did Clint know it was there? Why did he frequent a decrepit store so often that the shopkeeper recognizes him on sight? How had he managed to remember this in particular and make the connection with his memories still hazy? Bucky’s fingers trace over the J, trying to focus on the indistinct picture in his head of dark hair and olive green uniform. It slips away after a second and he huffs out a sigh, flicks to the next page. That’s when he notices the white card sticking out of the middle, gently removes it from the book.  
  
It’s a picture of _them_ , and he picks himself out immediately, shirt unbuttoned and sleeves pushed up. The Bucky Barnes from back then is different - his hair’s short, scruffy, and there are shadows under his eyes that are darker than what’s there currently. He looks haunted, the grip on his gun far too tight for a peaceful photograph. The Bucky Barnes from now wonders where his dog tags went, whether Hydra had destroyed them like they’d destroyed the rest of his identity. He sets the photograph back inside the book gingerly and closes it, sets it down next to him.  
  
“Thought you might appreciate memories from people who were there rather than going to a museum or something,” Clint says, apparently paying attention to him without looking. “Authentic shit, rather than rose-tinted glasses.”  
  
“It’s- good. Thank you,” he answers, looking down at his hands.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
“I don’t feel like I can just go back to being Bucky Barnes from then,” he says, and his voice sounds frustrated even to his own ears. “I _was_ him, but I don’t-”  
  
“You don’t have to,” Clint answers easily, like it doesn’t matter. Bucky looks up and Clint’s not even watching him, still gazing at the television. “You can’t go backwards, Barnes. Only forwards. And you’re doing a pretty good job so far, anyway.”  
  
He blinks, slowly. It occurs to him that the random trips to public places are likely Clint’s way of trying to acclimate him to other people, get him used to doing something that’s not strictly the Winter Soldier, but Bucky Barnes. And it wasn’t a complete disaster. Huh. He hadn’t magically turned back into the nineteen-forties version of himself, but he hadn’t killed anyone, and he’d held a coherent, if stinted conversation with a completely random woman. Maybe Clint had a point about moving forwards and just maybe it wasn’t so impossible after all.  
  
Clint makes a ‘hrm’ noise in his throat, puts his feet up on the coffee table. There’s a few empty bottles that weren’t there before and Bucky wonders how many drinks Clint has had while he spaced out. Clint looks comfortable and soft, half-sprawled on the couch next to Bucky like there’s no place he’d rather be. The beer is held loosely between his fingers, enough that Bucky’s slightly concerned about him dropping it. He wonders if there’ll be time to grab it when he does drop it.  
  
“I’m just remembering how to be Clint Barton again,” he says finally. “You’re learning how to be a whole new person _on top_ of remembering who you were before this.”  
  
“A whole new person, huh,” Bucky repeats, feels the wry smile on his lips. “Both and neither, like you said.”  
  
“Absolutely. You want to change your name, dye your hair?”  
  
“No,” he answers, grimacing. “Changing my name feels like running away again.”  
  
“Both, then?” Clint offers. “The Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes is the Winter Soldier?”  
  
 _Bucky Barnes is the Winter Soldier_ , he repeats to himself silently, feels it settle warm in his chest. It should be a bad thing, really, to claim the second name, but it doesn’t _feel_ bad. It’s part of him, as much as the rest. And he’s going to reclaim it from Hydra one day. Natasha Romanov did it- he can do it too. Come to think of it, the SHIELD files had said Agent Barton had been the one to bring her in, too. Bucky wonders if Clint rehabilitates people on purpose or whether it’s some sort of recurring miracle, whether he knows the effect he has on people.  
  
Clint slumps sideways onto him, his hair brushing Bucky’s shoulder, and he smells of beer and whatever deodorant he’d bought from the store. Bucky has the strangest urge to pet the man’s head, but he manages to refrain. He still has no clue why Clint seems to have decided he’s perfectly safe settled up against Bucky, but he’s warm and it’s nice, so he doesn’t move. Maybe this is part of the ‘learning to be a normal person’ thing, but either way, he doesn’t care.  
  
Really, this is all happening because of Clint Barton. Bucky would be somewhere completely different, still avoiding himself and his memories if he hadn’t seen him. And yet he’s here, with his also-formerly brainwashed companion, trying to do normal people things instead of blowing things up and shooting Hydra scientists.  
  
“Thank you,” he says, quietly even though he can tell from Clint’s heartbeat and breathing that he’s already asleep.

 

 

****2 - Bucky Barnes** **

 

  
”Where are we going?”  
  
“Places,” Bucky replies, slamming the brakes on just quickly enough to avoid the car that speeds past them, running a red light. Clint swears next to him and raises his middle finger at the driver and Bucky snorts. At least Hydra had taught him how to drive properly. He sighs and Clint flops back in his seat, adjusts his cap so it’s not covering his eyes as much. Bucky’s acquiesced to a cap as well, which he’d been handed this morning cheerfully. It’s got a small green man on it, who Bucky doesn’t recognize and doesn’t _want_ to recognize, from the way Clint had beamed at it when he saw it on Bucky’s head.  
  
“ _Bucky,”_ Clint says, his tone more of a whine than anything else.  
  
Bucky sighs. “If you stop nagging I’ll swing by at the pizza place you were eyeing off on the way back.”  
  
“But- ugh, fine. Curse you and your bribing ways,” he grumbles.  
  
 _"Captain America has been sighted in the Huntsville National Airport. Sources say he was missing his uniform and his shield was packed away. There are suggestions he may be looking to recruit new Avengers after rumours of Inhumans in Alabama. A local fire in the North of Alabama was said to be caused by a young girl, no more than five or six. Witnesses claim that she started the fire with nothing more than her m- _”  
  
__ “Alabama, huh,” Clint comments, turning the radio to a station that immediately starts chiming out pop music. “He’s pretty far off.”  
  
“You were right about him not being able to track us once we stopped fucking with Hydra,” Bucky agrees, flicks on his turning signal. “I keep expecting people to notice us and we get screwed, but there’s nothing.”  
  
“I think the leather glove helps,” Clint says, gesturing at Bucky’s left hand. “But honestly, who would believe the formerly brainwashed Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier are on a roadtrip together? Eating fries, drinking at pubs, watching low-budget action films at the drive-in cinema? No one really knew what you looked like even after the fall of SHIELD, and no one recognizes me unless I’m in my full suited glory and standing next to a different, more recognizable Avenger.”  
  
“You’re plenty memorable,” Bucky says and Clint laughs, pats at his thigh with amusement. Bucky’s now becoming an expert at small talk _and_ ignoring the way his heart stops beating a little when Clint touches him.  
  
“Am I your favourite Avenger now, Barnes?”  
  
“I know like three of them by name, Clint. It’s not something that you should be that happy about,” he answers dryly.  
  
“I’m still taking it as a win,” Clint says.  
  
“That’s your choice, but you’re still an idiot,” Bucky replies.  
  
He squints at the sign on the street corner and turns, pulling up in-between two of the fence posts that he’s assuming are supposed to serve as parking spaces. Clint makes a curious noise when he sets the car into park and presses his face against the window. Logically, he could’ve just gotten out of the car, but Bucky lets him have his fun as he gets out and pulls out the duffel bag of gear he’d gotten out specifically for this. They’re standing front of a wall of trees, impossible to see through, with a hand-painted sign pointing to a dirt path.  
  
Bucky walks around the side of the car and stops by the passenger door. Clint’s still got his nose pressed against the window, looking up at the sign. Bucky sighs and opens the door, refraining from snorting as Clint nearly falls on the ground. He pulls himself up with minimal effort, hopping out of the car and looking around. Once he’s done he turns to Bucky expectantly, and Bucky’s reminded of the golden retriever from Dog Cops.  
  
“Where are we?”  
  
“A place,” Bucky says dryly. “Come on.”  
  
He starts walking down the path and Clint follows after a heartbeat, catching up to him easily. There’s no sign of people here, so Clint’s hat gets strapped to his belt loop almost immediately as they wander through the clusters of trees.  
  
“There you go,” he says, gesturing with his gloved hand when they near the end of the path. Clint raises an eyebrow at him but speeds up slightly so he reaches the open field before Bucky does. He stops dead and Bucky smiles to himself as he sees the targets lined up along the opposite end. He’s not sure why, exactly, someone had made themselves a field in the middle of a grove like this, but it’s certainly convenient for his gift to Clint.  
  
“Did you-?”  
  
“I figure we’ve done Winter Soldier things, we did Clint Barton things, we did Bucky Barnes things,” Bucky says, setting down the duffel. “Only square we’re missing is Hawkeye.”  
  
Clint turns back to him with wide eyes as he’s pulling out the recurve bow, the black finish catching the morning light. Bucky gives him a smile, ignoring the nerves bubbling under his skin, hoping like hell this wasn’t a bad idea after all. Clint continues to stare at him for a few long minutes and then he turns his stare onto the bow. There’s complete silence, apart from the distant sound of the wind brushing through the trees.  
  
“Range, large supply of arrows, bow,” Bucky introduces with a wave of his hand. “Took me a while to find one that would survive - there’s a lot of shitty ones out there, made of absolute crap. Lot of scammers.”  
  
Clint looks frozen. He's still staring.  
  
“Is it… okay?” Bucky asks the question hesitantly when he doesn’t get a reaction. “Shit, was this a bad idea? Do you want to go back to the safehouse?”  
  
“No, no, it’s-” Clint says frantically. “I just- you did all that for __me__?”  
  
“Do you see any other archers here?”  
  
“No,” Clint answers, looking down at his feet. He looks smaller, somehow. “I- Bucky, holy shit. I didn’t even think I-”  
  
He shakes his head a little and when he looks up, his expression’s clearer. Bucky doesn’t know how to react to the erratic display of emotions, so he just holds the bow up. Clint’s messy expression gets slightly cloudier and then he smiles, although it looks a little fragile. It’s still not clear if he’s going to start crying or not.  
  
“Bucky, I…” Clint starts again, then snorts. “Nah, nevermind. Hand over the bow and nobody gets hurt.”  
  
Bucky relinquishes it and moves to the fence to sit on top of it, watching as Clint runs his hand up the riser. He glances back at Bucky for a small second and then picks up an arrow. The bow is nice, if he does say so himself, a handmade beauty crafted by an archer from out of town. He’d been through about a dozen different places in person and five hundred places online. Still, it looks even better in Clint’s careful hands, fitting against his fingers perfectly.  
  
Clint turns to the rows of targets Bucky had laid out in varying stages of distance and size, stops when he’s facing one that’s in the middle. Bucky watches, breath catching in his lungs as he watches the blond aim, draw back, and fire. It hits the direct center of the bullseye, of course, and Clint turns around with a little shy smile on his face.  
  
“Well done,” he calls out, and Clint’s smile widens.  
  
“Can’t seem to miss,” he calls back, and Bucky grins.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Good evening, boys,” the pink-haired bartender greets, already reaching for the cheapest beer they have when she lays eyes on Clint. “Same as usual?”  
  
Bucky nods assent and leans up against the dark wood of the bar, silently mapping out the exit routes the same way he does every time. They’ve been to this place enough times that he has it down pat, finding the emergency exit behind a dancing man and confirming there’s a chair to throw through the window at the front if needed. Clint is more subtle but Bucky notices him doing it too, hopping up onto a stool comfortably and turning his cheerful smile onto the bartender when she hands him the beer. A second later she’s pushing a glass of blue liquid that’s almost poisonous in appearance over to Bucky, smiling at him briefly.  
  
“Thank you,” Bucky says, bringing it to his lips.  
  
Clint eyes the cocktail dubiously. “You sure that’s fit for human consumption?”  
  
“Don’t know, don’t care. I don’t think I can be poisoned anyway,” Bucky answers with a shrug, taking a sip. It’s sweet, syrupy in texture with the faintest burn on the way down, and he has no clue what’s in it. That’s part of the fun, though. He gives the bartender a thumbs-up when she looks their way from where she’s gone to serve other customers. She beams at him, clearly delighted by his approval, and Clint snorts, goes back to drinking his cheap beer.  
  
“When I said you should work on interacting with people other than me I didn’t mean becoming the guinea pig for the trainee barmaid,” he says.  
  
“I’m _rediscoverin’ myself_ ,” Bucky replies, a little mockingly. “Anyway, I spent seventy years drinking protein shit and being hooked up to IV’s. This is fine- I get to try new things and it makes her happy. It’s nice.”  
  
“If you say so,” Clint answers, looking amused.  
  
They’ve been frequenting this place off-and-on for the last two weeks, a family-run bar with no criminal attachments and no crowds. There’s enough of a pull that Clint and Bucky aren’t the only patrons frequenting the area, but certainly not enough to cause the kind of panic they’d had the day they’d attempted to go to Starbucks during the lunch rush. Clint likes people-watching and Bucky likes being around people, on his better days. No one bothers them and it’s a gentle reminder he looks and acts like a normal person, doesn’t draw any more attention than the older gentleman in the corner or the person with the mohawk on their phone.  
  
When Bucky glances back at Clint, he’s watching a two women kiss against the battered jukebox. Despite the attentiveness he doesn’t look particularly upset by it, judging by the faint smile on his face. They hadn’t had a word for ‘homophobic’ that Bucky remembered back in the day, but it was still a relief to see Clint wasn’t inclined that way. Actually, come to think of it, he has no idea which way Clint is inclined. It’s not like he’s been around anyone but Bucky for a while.  
  
“It’s nice they can do that in public,” he says. “Without worrying about all the shit you had to worry about back then.”  
  
“Yeah,” Clint agrees quietly. “Was it really as bad as they make it out to be?”  
  
“It certainly wasn’t fuckin’ pleasant,” Bucky says dryly.  
  
“You sound like you’re talking from experience,” Clint comments, and when Bucky looks at him again Clint’s giving him a considering look. He hasn’t gotten any worrying comments from Clint, and the man had raved about the brothers from Supernatural enough that Bucky doesn’t feel too self-conscious talking about it. (He ignores the voice that reminds him that he hasn’t even told his best friend about this yet, and pushes the faint sense of guilt down.)  
  
“Yeah,” he says when he breaks out of his thoughts. “Took a lot of girls dancing to throw people off the scent, but I liked screwing guys. Nothing serious, just- stuff in dark alleyways, sometimes their place. I’d never take them to the place I shared with- you know.”  
  
“I can imagine,” Clint says sympathetically, and he doesn’t comment on Bucky skipping over _that_ name again. Bucky appreciates him. “The circus didn’t really care about gender or sexuality, so I didn’t either. Doesn’t matter to me- if I like someone I like them, I don’t know. I’m an equal-opportunity slut.”  
  
Bucky snorts at him. “Unless you figured out how to be in two places at the same time, you’ve been doing a pretty bad job of being a slut.”  
  
“I’m a _retired_ equal-opportunity slut, then,” Clint grumbles. “Is that better, your highness?”  
  
He shifts and then stretches his hands up above his head, drawing Bucky’s attention straight to where his t-shirt’s riding up his stomach. Bucky’s almost sad that Clint is a retired slut, because good fucking _grief_ , he has no right being that attractive. Then again, he’s not sure casual sex would even fix his depressing fascination with Clint Barton. Clint opens his eyes when Bucky’s still staring despondently at the muscles shifting under his skin and Bucky freezes, a little panicked.  
  
Clint looks down at his stomach, clearly puzzled, as if he’s looking for something that might be stuck to his shirt that Bucky’s staring at. Then his eyes light up with realization and he peels up a corner of his shirt again, revealing a sliver of hip and the waistband of his underwear. Clint’s fingers land on the edge of the ink marked into his skin and Bucky sweats inwardly. Some part of him misses the true Winter Soldier days when he didn’t accidentally manifest feelings for his companions because he was a cold-hearted machine.  
  
“You like tattoos?”  
  
Bucky silently thanks whatever gods that are out there for Clint’s obliviousness in this particular regard. “Sure, yeah. Tattoos.”  
  
“I got it when I was- twenty? Twenty one, and going through an aggressive twink phase. Not that I was much of a twink, with the height and the muscles and the… yeah, no, it didn’t work. The eyeliner and mesh shirts were fun though,” Clint says absently, fingers tracing one wing. “I don’t know, it was a weird time. I was going to get it lasered off.”  
  
“No, don’t,” Bucky says before his brain catches up with his mouth.  
  
Clint raises an eyebrow. “You like it?”  
  
“It’s… nice,” Bucky admits because it’s too late to cover over his appreciation of Clint’s tattoos. He doesn’t mention the way he’d started mooning over it as the Asset. That’s in the past, where it can stay. It’s no longer a reminder of Clint’s humanity because _that’s_ evident in the way Clint’s slouched comfortably against the bar, the spark of amusement in those blue eyes, but the sight of the tattoo still causes warmth to curl deep in Bucky’s chest. The only problem is that when he catches sight of it he wants to _touch_ , which is a terrible idea.  
  
“You ever thought of getting one?” Clint doesn’t seem to notice his inner turmoil, now fidgeting with his belt loop.  
  
“I don’t know,” Bucky says, looking down at his lap. A _tattoo_? “Would it even show up on my skin, with the serum?”  
  
“I think if you’d had the actual supersoldier serum and not the knockoff Hydra version, it wouldn’t work,” Clint answers thoughtfully. “But you just heal fast, you don’t have that spotless perfection thing Steve has going on.”  
  
“Thanks,” Bucky says dryly, but he doesn’t pull away when Clint’s hands land on his wrist, careful fingers turning his hand over and running over the pale skin there. There’s a thick scar along the side of his hand, which Clint traces for a second before thumbing over another, thinner scar Bucky’s mind insists was from a very well-sharpened katana. There’s a whole map of marks up his right arm, some of which he still can’t remember the origin of.  
  
“Tattoos are just pigments in the skin,” Clint says absently. “If you’re still keeping scars I don’t see why tattoos wouldn’t work too.”  
  
“...shit, yeah, you’re right,” Bucky realizes. “I could get a tattoo.”  
  
“That’s a cute idea,” the bartender chirps from beside them and Bucky bravely does not flinch. “There’s a tattoo place two doors down! My favourite artist works there, she does such pretty work. You’d love it, James.”  
  
“Yeah, James,” Clint repeats, and Bucky catches a hint of _something_ in his voice.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Mornin’,” Clint greets. “  
  
“Did you go for a jog or something? Weird,” he answers. “Did I step into an alternate dimension accidentally? Normally I have to kick you out of… bed.”  
  
Bucky stops as he looks up, because he has to take a minute to absorb the sight in front of him.  
  
He’s assaulted (or at least, it feels like he is) by the sight of a shirtless Clint Barton coming in the front door. Clint’s damp with sweat, his hair sticking to his forehead haphazardly and his face flushed. It’s a look that should be illegal, especially with the way Bucky gets an eyeful of compact muscles and flat stomach. He’s seen Clint undressed in combat situations but never without the functional aspect and with that lazily content expression on his face. He looks like he’s been running around in the morning sun and it’s unfairly hot.  
  
He stares at Clint’s abs just long enough for him to notice.  
  
“The old lady from next door’s been asking about her garden again,” Clint says in explanation. “I feel guilty, her son never visits her and her walker keeps getting caught up in the weeds out front. Haven’t used a weed whacker in years. Fuckin’ hot out there, though.”  
  
Bucky thinks he might’ve accidentally swallowed his own tongue. “Hm,” he manages to reply, very intelligently.  
  
“I forgot how much gardening sucks,” Clint comments as he wanders over to their kitchen and grabs a water bottle. It’s been warmer these last few days, although Bucky’s still in sweatpants and a hoodie. “I haven’t lived in a place with a garden since I was- since ever, actually. Wow. I’m definitely not getting one in the future, anyway.”  
  
The front yard to their safehouse is mostly concrete and whatever had been growing in the gaps had died a long time ago. Bucky sends a quiet curse at the past iteration of himself for buying a house without a lawn. Goddammit. Then again, maybe it’s better for his own sanity he doesn’t have to deal with this on a regular basis.  
  
Clint stretches his hands over his head and Bucky’s gaze is inevitably drawn back down to the V of his hips, the outline of the tattoo stark against his skin. Clint’s jeans are far too low-slung for this. He’s been aware that Clint is an attractive man, knew it objectively as the Asset and then more intimately as he became Bucky Barnes, but he’s not prepared for the way his nerves light up like he’s been zapped. It’s a good kind of electricity- not reminiscent of Hydra and their chair but something new, something he _likes_.  
  
“Alright, well, I’d better go find the rose fertilizer,” Clint says, completely unaware of Bucky’s wandering thoughts. “She said she’d give me a pie once I’m done, so we don’t have to make dinner.”  
  
“Nice,” Bucky answers weakly.  
  
“It’s apple pie, too,” Clint adds, apparently oblivious.  
  
Clint grins at him before he turns and disappears outside again. Bucky gives his back a vague facial expression he hopes is at least mildly positive. The thing is, he remembers what it was like to want to sleep with someone, but it never felt like _this_. It was always making subtle gestures at a willing stranger and then going somewhere private to get off before never seeing them again. Scratching an itch. Then he’d move onto something else, distracted by life or jobs or fights. There was so much going on back then, he’d never considered anything beyond sex.  
  
He’s never wanted someone _because_ he knows them. And yet, with Clint, he’s fascinated. Clint’s so interesting in so many different ways, cracked around the edges and fighting it every step of the way, and yeah, he’s _hot_ , but Bucky’s plagued with the desire to take him apart and see him unravel, to let Clint take him apart too. It’s weird, knowing he’d trust Clint to that extent. That he’d _want_ him to.  
  
Mostly he just wants Clint to fuck him so hard he forgets his own name again.  
  
It’s never going to happen, though, so Bucky thinks about the state of Mrs William’s front yard and mentally calculates how long it would take to clear it out. The last time he’d looked, the vines in her yard had swallowed half of her porch. His mind comes back with a number that’s long enough for him to take a moment to indulge himself, so he bites the bullet and shoves his sweatpants down his thighs.  
  
His mind’s still circling around Clint fucking him so he pulls in on that mental image as he gets his hand wet and wraps it around his cock. His pants are down enough that he can spread his legs a little, let his head fall back on the couch. It’s easy to translate Clint’s easygoing focus and skill into a sexual fantasy. Clint’s good with his hands no matter what he uses, and it’s been so long since he’s actually had decent sex. Bucky gets the feeling that ‘equal-opportunity slut’ means Clint knows exactly what he’s doing in bed, imagines those clever fingers sliding up his parted thighs and pushing them further apart.  
  
His teeth get caught in his lower lip and bite down any sounds as he closes his eyes and sees that sly smirk on Clint’s face as he kneels in front of Bucky. He knows it’s just his active imagination but he’s been living with Clint for long enough that he can construct something in his head that feels real, sucks in a hard breath through his nose as he pictures fingertips wet with lube running a teasing line down his dick. Sliding down further to press at his hole as the imaginary Clint presses his lips against the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, bites a little. Even the _idea_ of it has Bucky twitching a little, pushing back against the couch as his muscles tense up. It’s not just the sex, though, it’s _the Clint_ , and he really doesn’t understand his own mind at all.  
  
“ _Fuck_ ,” he says to the ceiling.  
  
The Clint in his mind looks pleasantly smug and Bucky’s hand tightens on his dick, hips shifting restlessly with the desire for more. He’s not entirely sure what _more_ entails, exactly- whether he wants to go outside and beg Clint to fuck him stupid (he can’t) or go into cardiac arrest right here and die on this couch. He’s just- he _wants_ -  
  
He hears the footsteps coming up the porch and bolts for the bathroom.  
  
It's a horrifically awkward affair but he manages to get the door shut just before the front door opens and sighs, slides down the locked door.  
  
“Forgot the bucket,” he hears Clint mutter to himself, over the deafening thump of his heart. _Jesus Christ_ , he thinks to himself.  
  
  
  
  
  
 _"The Avengers barely escaped with their lives today when they were attacked by a dastardly villain calling himself Kang The Conqueror. They were battered relentlessly by the blue-skinned man and his army, and some are saying they only survived due to Kang disappearing entirely. Buildings and people have been injured but so far there have been no reported fatalities. We turn now to the channel’s field reporter, who’s currently in Queens. Monica is present at the scene of the battle, ready to give us the report. Monica?  
  
_ _Hello, Charlie! Yes, I’m here at the scene, where as you can see, the surrounding buildings are little more than rubble now. It was a hard-won battle- the Avengers fought valiantly, but the losses were heavy this time. Iron Man, also known as Tony Stark, was just pulled away on a stretcher an hour ago to be taken to the nearest emergency room. After the battle the Hulk was nowhere to be found, and the only Avengers still on the scene are the Black Widow, Natasha Romanov, and the Falcon, a new recruit who seems to be nursing a broken arm.  
  
_ _Only four Avengers, Monica? There were six at the Battle of New York. Thor hasn’t been spotted for a long time, and Captain America is busy traversing the countryside. Hawkeye hasn’t been seen since- actually, when was the last time you saw him on the field? Do you think perhaps their lack of effectiveness is due to losing half of their members?  
  
_ _I think it might be, Charlie. Maybe Earth’s Greatest Heroes aren’t together enough to keep us safe anymore.”  
  
_ “What are you watching? That doesn’t look like Dog Cops,” Clint says as he drops down on the couch next to Bucky.  
  
Bucky cringes, because he’d meant to change the channel before the blond actually saw what was going. He can tell the exact second that Clint processes what is going on and the devastated expression makes his heart twist painfully. They’ve zoomed in on the Falcon now, where a medic is arguing with him and pointing insistently at an ambulance. The Falcon just shakes his head vehemently and then looks over at where a dark shape with red hair is standing at the edge of a crater, starts making his way over to her.  
  
He’s swaying as he does, but he makes it. They watch together as he reaches for the Widow’s hand with his unharmed arm, comforts her quietly. She doesn’t push him away. Clint lets out a shaky breath and Bucky sees his fingernails dig into his thighs over the denim of his jeans. It’s not fair that he’d immediately start feeling bad about something he couldn’t have done anything about.  
  
“It’s my fault,” he says. “I should be there, I should-”  
  
“It’s not your fault, you’re just one person, goddammit,” Bucky says, but there’s no venom in his words. There’s no sense in the Avengers getting beaten being Clint’s fault, of all things. He didn’t spawn this Kang guy. _And it’s not like he would’ve been much help if he’d just run into the fight with the mental state he’d had a few weeks ago,_ Bucky thinks to himself before he speaks again. “You didn’t make that Thor guy disappear, and if anything it’s _my_ fault Captain America isn’t there.”  
  
Clint doesn’t argue with him, but the pain on his face doesn’t lessen.  
  
Bucky doesn’t want to admit that he feels guilty about it too. He watches as Clint curls in on himself a little, still watching the silhouette of the Black Widow on the television. He looks lost, and Bucky glances back at the Widow before he steels his spine and turns to Clint properly. Clint only looks at him when Bucky’s hand lands over his own, squeezes gently.  
  
“Let’s go to New York,” he says.  
  
Clint’s eyes go wide. “You and me?”  
  
“I figure they can use all the help they can get,” Bucky says, gesturing at the television. “And I feel responsible too. They lost their supersoldier because of me- he’ll come back if I’m there."  
  
“Are you going to be- are you sure you’re going to be okay?”  
  
“I’ve been getting kind of itchy, as much as I love this,” he admits. He already knows Clint feels the same way from the increasing amount of pacing and twitching (not to mention the amount of throwing knives stuck in the refrigerator,) so it’s easier to talk about. It’s not the same need to drown his feelings in blood and noise, just a desire to do a good thing and _help_. “I’d be okay with fighting again. It’ll be nice to do it for the right reasons, for once.”  
  
“The Winter Soldier as an Avenger,” Clint says with a smile, like he understands. He probably does. “Guess we’re going to have to get our shit together, then.”  
  
“Don’t forget to pack the candy you hid in the cupboard,” Bucky says as he gets up to find their bags.  
  
Clint starts jamming his clothes into a duffel unceremoniously. Bucky’s tempted to complain about folding them properly, but he’s had no luck trying to stop Clint from being a slob so far. It’s likely that it’s a lost cause anyway, and if Bucky’s honest he likes the little flaws. It’s a far cry from the half-dead bloodstained man he’d picked up- if Clint coming back to himself means drinking all the coffee without sharing and leaving his clothes strewn around the safehouse, Bucky will take it. He’s been enjoying all the little quirks Clint’s started, and it’s amusing to discover his own on top of that.  
  
“Bow’s still on the couch,” he says when Clint looks around with a little lost expression on his face.  
  
It clears when he picks it up and carefully sets it at the front door with the clothes he’s already packed. That had definitely been a good buy on Bucky’s behalf- Clint loved it, had started making his own arrows at the coffee table (it made a mess but Bucky survives it for the look on Clint’s face.) Bucky checks his guns quickly before putting them in a different bag. One pistol stays out of the bag, in the holster inside the waistband of his jeans. He’s not going to go completely unarmed, even if he is trying to be less threatening. He’s comforted by the sight of Clint sliding a knife into his boot.  
  
Clint’s eyes meet his, unfathomably blue. “What about Steve?”  
  
Bucky looks away from that all-too knowing expression. “Gotta face him eventually,” he says, voice wavering a little.  
  
“You sure?”  
  
“I’m sure,” he says even though he _isn’t_ sure, because he might just run in the other direction the minute he lays eyes on the man. Bucky doesn’t know how he feels about his former best friend, or what his former best friend is going to feel when he realizes they’re different people now. “You won’t let me hurt him if I-?”  
  
“We’ve practiced disabling the arm about five hundred times and I’ve knocked you down a bunch of times,” Clint answers. “I don’t think you’ll just go wild after seeing him, but if you do, I’m ready. We’ve got this, Barnes.”  
  
“We’ve got this,” Bucky confirms, and considering how much he’s trusted Clint up until now, it’s not difficult to trust him for this, too.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Well, here we are,” Clint announces, but he doesn’t sound excited as he gets out of the car.  
  
The valet at the front takes the keys from him with a quiet murmur of his name, apparently unsurprised by the sudden appearance of Hawkeye after what is approximately half a year. Bucky slings their bags over his shoulders, realizing belatedly that most of their worldly possessions are either books, weapons or clothes (and the books are mostly science fiction or comic books, because they’d discovered a mutual love for shitty futuristic stuff and had quickly amassed a library.) He looks up at Avengers Tower and lets out a sigh. It’s not their safehouse in the middle of suburbia, but it’s got decent security and high perches, which is a bonus for both him and Clint.  
  
“JARVIS should let us up to my floor,” Clint says, leading the way into the Tower. “I’m just hoping we can hole up in there before we get ambushed.”  
  
“Do your friends make a habit of ambushing people?”  
  
“Sometimes,” Clint answers with a grimace. “People think we’re role models, but we’re all pretty fucked up when it comes down to it. You’ll do fine.”  
  
Bucky barks out a laugh. “Great, thanks.”  
  
The elevator doors open before Clint’s even gotten in front of it, making an inviting chime at them. Clint scratches at his chin and eyes off a nearby security guard before he shrugs and steps inside, waiting for Bucky to join him. The doors slide closed with a gentle click and then the elevator lights up a soft red. Bucky squints at the camera in the corner but doesn’t comment. This is Clint’s domain, he’s just following cues this time.  
  
“ _Agent Barton_ ,” a British voice greets. It sounds… off somehow. Robotic. “ _You have a wanted criminal standing next to you._ ”  
  
“Hey, JARVIS,” Clint answers, apparently unsurprised. “Yeah, he’s with me, no worries. Take us up to my floor, please?”  
  
“ _According to my servers this is the Winter Soldier,_ ” JARVIS says. “ _I should really inform Sir of this._ ”  
  
“He’s also Bucky Barnes, who is a prisoner of war and a national hero. We’re tired, man, we just drove through three states to get here. Can you sound the alarm in like, three hours? I need a nap,” Clint reasons. “I promise he’s not going to break anything. He’ll behave, won’t you, Buck?”  
  
“Sure,” Bucky replies easily. “I’m a regular gentleman.”  
  
Clint rolls his eyes fondly but doesn’t comment, and after a lengthy pause the red lights return to a softer white as the elevator begins moving. Apparently the voice has decided they aren’t an immediate threat, which Bucky is relieved about. He’s not ready to be shoved into an interrogation room just yet. It could be that the program has just decided it’s not worth the fight, given that the Widow and Hulk are the only ones at full health. Not that Bucky would willingly fight them, but he doesn’t particularly want to be crushed by a giant green fist either.  
  
The elevator dings cheerfully when they reach the right floor, which is when Bucky notices the white-knuckled grip Clint has on his bow and realizes it’s not just him that’s nervous.  
  
Clint’s not coming home from a vacation, he’s returning from being captured and brainwashed and tortured. He probably wouldn’t have made it back if not for Bucky picking him up. Bucky’s woken up to him staring at a wall with a haunted look in his eyes more than once, and he still flinches and grabs for a weapon when there’s a particularly loud noise. A lot of it he probably won’t ever recover from, given the life he leads, and it hurts Bucky’s heart a little. Clint still manages to face his problems, though, the way he’s doing now with his teeth indenting his lower lip and steel in his eyes.  
  
“You said something about a nap?” Bucky prompts when Clint doesn’t move.  
  
“Right, yeah,” Clint mutters, but he starts walking down the hallway. It’s a large area, separated into spacious rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and decor that looks like it was planned out by a person with a very boring taste in furniture. Bucky squints at a painting on the wall that appears to be made of green triangles and grimaces. Clint’s already dropped their bags behind him and sprawled out on the hard-looking cream couch. He doesn’t look that comfortable, when Bucky turns to look at him.  
  
“Did you actually _live_ here at any point?” Bucky asks.  
  
“Nah,” Clint says absently. “Tony gave me the floor, but I went out of the country on a mission straight after, and then I came back and started chasing Hydra around. Never got the chance to redecorate. Hey, do you think we should get that chair made out of sardines you saw online?”  
  
“No,” Bucky answers immediately, but he sets the bags he’s holding down and makes his way to Clint, who’s managed to take up the entirety of the couch. He stands for a moment and takes in the shadows under Clint’s eyes, the tension in his shoulders and sighs.  
  
It’s not hard to lift his legs to sit down, and then he’s got Clint’s feet resting in his lap instead. There’s a sliver of skin visible between his boot and where the cuff of his jeans have ridden up and Bucky thumbs at it before he thinks better of it. Clint’s got his eyes closed and he relaxes incrementally at Bucky touching him, though, so Bucky resumes the idle petting after a heartbeat. The close comfort was one of the things he’d had to learn from scratch, but Clint always encouraged it and loved hair-petting and slouching on him. It was endearing, a little bit.  
  
“How about a purple couch,” Clint bargains without opening his eyes.  
  
Bucky sighs again. “Can’t you just buy a black one? Bloodstains won’t show up on it either.”  
  
“Stop trying to induct me into your goth ways,” Clint grumbles. “I like colours.”  
  
“You like __neon.__ You’re like a child with crayons,” Bucky says with disgust.  
  
He pokes at Clint’s bootlaces, which were recently switched from their perfectly fine grey to a shade of violet that makes his retinas burn. Clint had managed to push him from the combat-ready practical-gear-only headspace, but Bucky was quite happy wearing a wardrobe that was largely comprised of black and Clint hadn’t managed to convince him otherwise. They’d instead stocked up on black hoodies and grey flannel shirts and Bucky had been content with that.  
  
Bucky looks over at Clint’s face and realizes he’s falling asleep right there. Obviously this whole situation was weighing on the man more than he’d admit. One arm is dangling off the couch, one hanging over his forehead, and the shadows under his eyes are even more prominent now. He rubs his thumb up Clint’s skin again and wonders if he should attempt moving them to the bed. Clint would probably laugh at him if Bucky tried to carry him.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Clint answers after a moment. “I’m just stressing for no good reason, y’know?”  
  
“You’ve got reasons,” Bucky says, trying to be somewhat comforting. “It’s scary, coming back after… everything. But you came back anyway. And now you’ll get to see your girl, right?”  
  
“She isn’t one for heartfelt reunions. Or anything heartfelt, really,” Clint says, opening his eyes to look up at the ceiling. “I’ve missed her, but she’s probably been too busy to worry about me. After that whole business with SHIELD being compromised, I’ll be surprised if she’s even noticed I was gone. It’s been a whole mess.”  
  
Bucky opens his mouth to argue but that’s when footsteps come bolting down the hallway and the Black Widow herself skids to a stop in the doorway. Her eyes land on Clint and then flick over to Bucky, down to the metal arm, and he sees her reaching for her gun the minute she registers his identity and whips out his own. It’s automatic, defending himself- they level their weapons at each other at the same time, Natasha’s expression dangerous in a way that scares even him. He’s about to start firing and get behind cover when he remembers this is Clint’s girl, someone who’s doing the right thing and a person he certainly shouldn’t be shooting.  
  
Bucky’s got to do the right thing here. He lowers the gun painfully, bracing himself for the shot. Just because he won’t hurt her doesn’t mean she won’t hurt him. Natasha’s eyes flick to the gun he’s set down next to him, back to his face and then to the gun again. She doesn’t lower hers. Clint’s feet shift in his lap idly and Bucky realizes he’s missed the confrontation completely with his eyes closed.  
  
“Get away from him,” she orders through gritted teeth.  
  
Bucky starts moving to get up but Clint’s noticed what’s going on now and bolts upright. He’s still half-awake though, evident through the way he goes to block Natasha’s shot by stumbling on the couch and ending up straddling Bucky’s thighs, waving his hands in the air. Bucky stops because he doesn’t want to accidentally get Clint shot. The voice in his head is screaming at him to protect Clint, push him down and pick up the gun again, but he has to trust Clint here.  
  
“What the _fuck_ , ‘tasha,” Clint yells, twisting around to stare at her over his shoulder.  
  
“That’s the Winter Soldier, Clint. He could hurt you,” Natasha says, her voice _nearly_ calm but not quite.  
  
“So could _you_! He’s not pointing the goddamn gun at me! I’m- Natasha, he’s fine, please put the fucking gun down,” and she must pick up on the barely repressed panic in Clint’s voice because a minute later there’s a faint rustle and Clint sags a little. Bucky refrains from the urge to grab him and hiss at Natasha for causing stress, instead stays where he is as Clint gets to his feet and takes a few steps towards her. “He’s with me, I brought him here.”  
  
Natasha gives Bucky a wary look. Bucky blinks back, tries to look as nonthreatening as possible. He’s not sure it actually works because she knows he is, in fact, very threatening indeed, but he has no intention of hurting her. It probably helps that he’s wearing an oversized hoodie of Clint’s pushed up to his elbows, patterned with little cartoon tacos. His hair’s in a haphazard knot from the long trip, one strand stuck to his nose and he’s fairly sure he looks more like a greasy teenager than a hundred-year-old assassin.  
  
She seems to decide he’s not an immediate threat because her gaze goes back to Clint as he stops in front of her. Bucky wonders if Clint looks any different from the last time she’s seen him, with the way she’s scrutinizing his face. There’s probably a few new scars, but all-in-all he’s unhurt, snarky and more or less mentally stable. He can’t see Clint’s expression, but he watches as Clint gently takes the revolver from her and tosses it onto the rug. She lets him.  
  
“Have you been adopting strays again?”  
  
“It’s more like he adopted me,” Clint says with amusement threading into his voice over the nerves. “Pulled me out of a Hydra base, saved my life.”  
  
“You’re an idiot,” she says as she allows him to pull her into an embrace, holding onto her tightly.  
  
Her words don’t contain any outward affection but Bucky watches the way she grabs him back and squeezes, like she’s making absolutely sure he’s real. It’s a little desperate, definitely vulnerable in a way he hadn’t really expected. He catches the expression on her face over Clint’s shoulder, something complicated between grief and love before she closes her eyes and hugs him close- and that’s when he knows Clint’s comments about her not caring are completely wrong, because there’s no doubt in his mind that Natasha _loves_ Clint, the same way he remembers loving his best friend too.  
  
They pull away and Natasha’s expression goes back to flat neutrality as she turns her attention back on Bucky. He’s fairly sure she forgot he was there, for a second, but he stays where he is.  
  
“You’re not under Hydra’s control?” She asks the question warily, but it doesn’t have the anger or venom it had the first time, and Bucky guesses it’s because Clint is fine.  
  
“They haven’t had control since the Triskelion battle,” he answers. “I wouldn’t be here if they did.”  
  
“I suppose not,” Natasha agrees reluctantly. “They can’t teach that bad of a fashion sense, that’s a power that only Clint possesses.”  
  
“Hey,” Clint argues. “It’s comfortable!”  
  
Bucky and Natasha snort at the same time and she looks almost surprised, but then sighs, shaking her head softly. “I’ll tell JARVIS to stop alerting Tony. He’s supposed to be staying in bed… yet I wouldn’t be surprised if he managed to somehow drag himself down here to defend the Tower. But I’m keeping the surveillance feed on and I’ll be watching,” she warns.  
  
“That’s fine,” Bucky says before Clint intervenes. “I get it, I’m dangerous. It’s okay.”  
  
“We’re all dangerous,” Natasha says with a shrug. “Just dangerous with trust issues.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“I’m surprised you didn’t kill me right away,” he says.  
  
Bucky and Natasha are sitting across from each other at the dining table- Clint had ordered pizza for all of them but had to go down to the lobby to actually retrieve it because the pizza delivery man wasn’t allowed clearance. There was a story to that, and Bucky had already resolved to pester Clint for the undoubtedly hilarious details when they had a spare moment. For now, though, he’s stuck sitting across from Clint’s best friend who may or may not want to murder him. It’s not like he’d blame her, but he’s pretty set on staying alive for now.  
  
“He’s the first person I’ve ever truly cared about,” Natasha says. “I won’t shoot through him to get to you, even for revenge. That’s a strategy of yours I won’t imitate.”  
  
“I remember that,” Bucky answers. “I’m sorry about it, for what it’s worth. You were just doing your job.”  
  
The smile reaches her eyes but not her lips. “So were you, when it comes down to it. Unfortunately you were the more effective person at that point in time. I don’t make a habit of harboring grudges for people who had no say in what they did. My grievances are directed at Hydra and the KGB.”  
  
 _ _-_ the blow is sudden, barely any force to it. The Asset barely feels it but registers it nonetheless, pulls the girl off of his shoulders and tosses her across the room like she weighs nothing. She hits the wall with a soft thunk and falls to the floor, her gasps for breath audible as the Asset stalks across the cold concrete floor to her. His metal fist closes around her hair, and he pulls her to her feet by the startlingly red locks. Fierce green eyes meet his, trying to be threatening but helplessly afraid. She’s tiny, barely old enough to know what is happening to her, and yet she fights him, slaps at his arm like she could be something more than a helpless child.   
  
__“This is a waste of time,” a man says from behind the observation window, in Russian. “The Black Widow program is a waste of time. Look how ineffective this one is.”  
  
_ _"Should we start looking at termination?”  
  
_ _The Asset pulls the girl off of her feet, pulls her up to his masked face. She’s still struggling helplessly, fists beating against his chest ineffectively. The handlers are still discussing killing her, and the countless other girls they’ve had the Asset fighting since he’d been awoken. Some of them are no more than eight, all desperate simply to survive.  
  
_ _“Use your size to your advantage,” he says, quiet enough that no one but her can hear. Her eyes go wide. “Try swinging up and using your legs instead of your fists.”  
  
_ _There’s a flicker of understanding in those sharp green eyes and she springs into action almost immediately, her thighs wrapping around him as she uses his own weight to pull him down. Fast learner. He only drops to his knees, not fully thrown, but she’s already rolling out of reach and bouncing to her feet. When he looks up at her again, the handlers are silent, watching. Waiting.  
  
_ Bucky looks at Natasha silently and she pushes one strand of red hair behind her ear, looks back at him with eyes that know far too much for one person.  
  
“Welcome to the other side,” she says quietly.  
  
Sam Wilson appears in the doorway, arm in a sling and bandages wrapped around his other shoulder, up his neck. He looks tired, right down to his bones, but walks over to the table and drops down into the chair next to Natasha silently. Clearly Natasha’s already told him of Bucky’s presence, because he doesn’t look surprised or particularly angry, even. Bucky keeps expecting them to attack, to argue his place or try and use him for information, but even Sam just rests his chin on his unharmed hand and waits.  
  
“You kicked me off a Helicarrier,” Sam says after a beat.  
  
“I did,” Bucky agrees, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”  
  
Sam studies him for a beat, then lifts his unhurt shoulder in a shrug. “I’m glad you’re here, man. Now Steve will stop moaning about you.”  
  
Bucky flinches and it’s not a huge, obvious thing but Sam clearly notices anyway. He glances at Natasha. “Does Steve actually know he’s here?”  
  
“JARVIS already told Tony before I had a chance to intervene,” Natasha says, giving Bucky a regretful glance. “I managed to calm him down before he got out of bed and hurt himself further, and he’s fine with letting James stay, but he called Steve. He’s on his way from Miami.”  
  
“I’ve got to ask, were you guys actually ever in Florida at all?”  
  
Bucky returns Sam’s amused stare with a shrug. “Nope. I wasn’t ever in Florida. Maybe Georgia, at one point, but only for a couple of days. Once I was with Clint we didn’t even near there.”  
  
“Man, his tracking skills really do suck when one of us isn’t with him,” Sam says. “Thanks for coming back. I’ve had enough of goddamn roadtrips for a lifetime, as much as I love your buddy.”  
  
“Yeah, well, it looks like you need all the help you can get,” Bucky replies.  
  
“Reinforcements are here, you guys can take a break,” Clint announces. “We kick ass too, sometimes.”  
  
Clint drops the stack of pizzas on the table between them and grins, dropping down into the seat next to Bucky without even a second of hesitation. Bucky’s surprised a little, because he knows Clint’s missed Natasha like a lost limb and yet he’s still choosing to sit right here, radiating warmth that Bucky can just barely feel from where their shoulders are nearly touching. The others don’t comment on it, oddly enough. Sam strikes up a conversation about _Terminator_ , probably in a bid that’s meant to aggravate Bucky, but they’ve already watched it and so they end up discussing Arnold Schwarzenegger instead.  
  
It’s mundane, disturbingly normal for a group that consists of a hundred year-old former Fist of Hydra, a two-time brainwashed archer, a former KGB assassin and- actually, Bucky has no idea what Sam’s deal is beyond the wings, but he’s here too. As Clint cracks a terrible joke and Natasha hides a smile behind her hand, Bucky stops worrying about being shoved into a box, because for some reason these people have just accepted him as is, the same as Clint had. And maybe he can have some semblance of a normal life after all, and if not a completely normal one, one that’s miles above seventy years of Hydra brainwashing.  
  
  
  
  
  
“He’ll be here soon,” Clint notes quietly, looking at his phone and then back up at Bucky. It’s a text from Natasha, who’d left to work on relations with a person they wouldn’t use the name of. Clearly she’d been keeping an eye on the man for them, and Bucky’s infinitely grateful for her warning. He’d probably jump out a window reflexively to escape if it was sprung on him without the advance notice. (He’s tempted to do it anyway, but he won’t.) It’s still stunning that Natasha’s just accepted his presence like this, even if Bucky knows she’s staying armed the whole time she’s around him.  
  
Natasha isn’t really the cause of his anxiety, though.  
  
 _Ah_ , Bucky thinks. _He’s_ going to be here. In front of him. In the flesh. Together. What he actually says sounds more like “good fucking Christ above” than _ah_ , but it has the same tone. Clint pats his thigh in an attempt at comfort, squeezes gently. The low thrum of calm it causes is just proximity to Clint, who Bucky’s brain seems to have just decided is a human beacon of safety.  
  
He’s known ever since he started genuinely liking Clint that he’d eventually have to face his best friend, but it doesn’t make the reality of it any less daunting. They’re sitting in what’s been referred to as ‘the common floor,’ mostly because it’s got a brown leather couch that’s been worn to optimal levels of comfortable and doesn’t feel like concrete- unlike the one on Clint’s floor. Clint’s already gone up to see Tony Stark in the penthouse to talk about refurnishing and came back with two thumbs up and a grin, which is a bonus. At least the floor he’s going to hide in for the rest of eternity will be nicely furnished.  
  
God, what if he decides he doesn’t want anything to do with Bucky now? What if he just wants to see him to put a gun to his head and be done with it for once and all? He sucks in a panicked breath and gets a lapful of sleepy blond, like Clint’s trying to just snuggle the anxiety out of him. The worst part is that it works a little bit too.  
  
Clint’s cheek rubs against his shoulder briefly. “You want me to run interference? I’m pretty sure I still fit in some of the vents. Could cause some harmless chaos and destruction, give you more time.”  
  
“I don’t think we should start breaking things the second day we get here,” Bucky says. “Anyway, it’s… it’s fine. Better to get it over with, right?”  
  
“You say that like you’re enemies,” Clint replies quietly. “What’re you expecting to happen here? He’s been hunting you since he found out you were still alive. He loves you. You love him.”  
  
“I…” Bucky sighs. “He loves Bucky Barnes from the forties, not… this.”  
  
“Give him a chance to love this version too,” Clint says, idly tracing a circle on his thigh. “He might surprise you.”  
  
Bucky’s heart clenches a little in his chest, because Clint’s right, he has to take that risk. He’s also seizing up internally because Clint’s still here, still helping him and staying with him and _caring_. It’s a feeling he’s started to get used to after the last few weeks, and he reaches for Clint’s hand with his right one, squeezes gently. He gets a returning squeeze almost immediately. It’s comforting. At least no matter what happens here, he’s going to have one person with him, and he has to admit that in the depths of his mind, he really can’t imagine a world where he doesn’t have Clint by his side.  
  
“Captain Rogers is in the lobby,” JARVIS announces.  
  
Right. Yes. This was happening. Bucky lets out a sigh and stamps down the anxiety buzzing in his brain. Clint pushes off of him and stands up, letting go of Bucky’s hand. Bucky watches him scratch at his hair, messing it up even further before he turns back with one of those little half-smiles on his face. Bucky stands and Clint walks over to the wall separating them from the kitchen area, leaning back on it with his arms crossed. He’s got knives in his belt, a handgun in a leg holster, ready for whatever eventuality this causes. It settles some of the stress bubbling up in Bucky’s head and he sighs, taking a few steps down the hallway. Clint stays where he is, on guard.  
  
 _I’m not ready,_ he thinks desperately as rapid footsteps echo up from the entrance to the stairs. It doesn’t matter though, because there’s a bang as the door’s smacked open with far more force than necessary and then Captain America is skidding to a stop a meter in front of him. His face is full of shock, like he hadn’t actually expected Bucky to be here. Bucky wonders how many false alarms there have actually been since the fall of SHIELD. Then again, he might just be judging him for the black skinny jeans.  
  
“ _Buck_ ,” he says breathlessly, hair a mess and eyes wide. He takes a step forward and then stops, looks hesitant. “Do you- do you remember me?”  
  
“Captain America,” Bucky says automatically, and it’s _technically_ right but Bucky can tell from the look on his face it isn’t what he’s looking for. He tries again. “You- when you were sick in bed I’d bring you broth and pose for you so you had something to draw. Your ma used to say I was a mother hen but it was just because you wouldn’t stay in bed otherwise.”  
  
“You _were_ a mother hen,” comes the reply, and then he’s taking those last few steps to yank him into an embrace. Bucky realizes he’s shaking a little (actually, they’re both shaking and it’s more than just a _little_ ) but he hugs back automatically anyway. It’s never occurred to him to _miss_ this before but it’s like having a missing limb returned as he squeezes tighter. He gets a few seconds of relief before the impending guilt that always surrounds this surges onto him like a wave.  
  
“ _Steve_ ,” he says against Steve’s neck, unable to stop the impending confession or the threat of tears. Steve’s holding him so tight he thinks a normal person might have had their lungs collapsed. “Steve, I killed Becca, they made me kill her, there was so much blood and I- I-”  
  
“What?” Steve pulls back from their embrace, looks him in the eyes. He’s so __good__ it hurts. Bucky wouldn’t blame him for shooting Bucky, putting him down like a rabid dog. But he doesn’t even look upset, just… gently concerned, like Bucky had confessed to accidentally stepping on an ant. “Bucky, why do you think that?”  
  
“They showed me pictures,” he grits out, past the weight in his chest. The images of curly hair covered in blood, the knife in his hand flickering past his eyelids. “Zola, he…”  
  
He tries curling in on himself but Steve’s not letting him get away- and god, he hates Erskine for giving Steve the strength to be able to just hold him here like this. He wants to run away and hide again. “Buck. Bucky, listen to me. Whatever he showed you, it was fake. Becca died of heart failure a year ago.”  
  
“I- what? No, I-”  
  
“Listen to me,” Steve says, gentle but firm, his eyes still that same fathomless blue. “Zola lied to you. I visited her in the nursing home once. She recognized me. Threw a slipper at me when I made a joke about the way she used to follow you around. It hit me in the face and she laughed at me. She was fine, perfectly lucid. We talked about the old days. She’d never seen you after- after you fell.”  
  
“I’m,” he starts, but doesn’t have a way to finish that sentence. He _hadn’t_ -?  
  
“If you couldn’t kill me, what made you think they could make you kill her? She was your favourite, you treasured her,” Steve reasons, a sad little smile on his face. There’s no doubt in Bucky’s mind he’s telling the truth, but… “Don’t take my word for it, though. I have pictures. We can go visit her grave later, if you want.”  
  
“Yeah,” Bucky manages to say. “Yeah, that’s…”  
  
Steve pulls him back into another hug and Bucky clings onto him tightly.  
  
“I have so much to talk to you about,” Steve says.  
  
“Me too, pal,” Bucky answers.  
  
The elephant’s worth of guilt he carries around doesn’t feel quite so heavy anymore.  
  
  
  
  
  
“You want to finish the next season of Doctor Who? Stark’s got all the new ones, we can watch the episodes we’ve missed,” Clint says as Bucky enters the lounge.  
  
He’s spread out in the corner of the uncomfortable couch in baggy green pajama pants and a black sweater Bucky’s fairly sure was in his duffel bag before he got up. It takes a second to actually get the awareness to move, with the combination of a stressful day yesterday and the sight of Clint lazing around in the dappled sunlight. Bucky’s seen the same sight often enough that it shouldn’t take his breath away every time, but there’s just something indescribable about the subtle arch of his spine and the way the light catches his eyes that Bucky can’t look away. He manages to get to the couch after he can tear his gaze away, settles down next to Clint when he moves his legs.  
  
Clint switches on the television and flicks it to the channel he’s looking for with minimal effort.  
  
“You look like a sad mop,” he says without inflection, gesturing at the way Bucky’s hair has fallen out of its tie, strands falling over his face and curling a little at the ends from the heat. Bucky swipes at it, sighs and decides to just leave it the way it is. Clint snorts at him.  
  
“I’m just tired,” he says and Clint gives him a sympathetic glance and taps Bucky’s thigh with his bare toes. He doesn’t ask, doesn’t fish for information or question him, just accepts the reasoning at face value and goes back to watching the show.  
  
Bucky slouches back on the couch, feeling some of the stress from yesterday peel off of his skin. He’d spent the whole of yesterday with Steve, catching up and talking right through lunch and dinner. It had been enlightening; Bucky still had gaps here and there in his memory and Steve was more than happy to fill him in. More than that, though, it had been like fitting a piece of himself back where it belonged. He’d missed Steve, as much as he’d been terrified of seeing him again. Seventy years of brainwashing hadn’t killed their friendship and neither had this.  
  
But oh, it was _stressful_. Being with Steve meant being pressured; pressured to remember and reminisce and act the same way he’d used to- getting that disturbed little frown when he didn’t. Clint just slumps sideways in his seat and watches the characters on the screen, and Bucky feels an acute sense of relief. He’d been half-worried everyone else would start expecting him to act more like Bucky Barnes from the forties, but Clint’s the same as always. There’s no change here, just Clint’s feet tucked under his thigh and the television chattering. After all the drama of the last few days, it doesn’t take much effort for Bucky to start drifting off.  
  
He blinks and his eyes stay closed for a beat too long.  
  
When he comes back to himself it’s to a blanket being tucked around his legs gently. The television’s still playing, but the volume’s been turned down so it’s nearly inaudible, barely background noise. He floats for a moment, relishing the warmth as fingers press to his jaw briefly in affection. It couldn’t be anyone but Clint and before Bucky’s thinking about it he turns a little and presses his smile into Clint’s palm.  
  
“Hey there,” Clint says, soft.  
  
“Mm,” Bucky answers.  
  
His hand moves away and instead strokes lightly through Bucky’s hair, quietly soothing. Bucky’s just sleep-drunk enough to lean into it, tilt his head invitingly. “You comfortable there, buddy?”  
  
“Sure,” Bucky agrees. “Don’t stop.”  
  
Clint laughs, voice low and delighted as the couch dips down under his weight again. The hand continues petting him steadily, and Bucky feels like he’s _home_ all of a sudden. Like he’s meant to be here in this flashy tower, with the uncomfortable decor and the robotic voice in the walls and Steve- but most of all like he’s meant to be right here, under Clint’s fingers, listening to him laugh and talk and take care of him. It’s shocking how right everything feels, like the last piece of a puzzle settling into the board.  
  
“Thank you,” he says. He means for the gratitude to be for their whole situation, everything that’s come to pass since Clint waltzed into his life and started killing Hydra, and it comes out heartfelt and soft. Clint seems oblivious to all that, though, and replies like Bucky was thanking him for the petting instead.  
  
“You’re like an oversized cat,” Clint replies. “Anyway, it’s not exactly a hardship. ‘s nice. You going anywhere today?”  
  
Bucky doesn’t answer verbally, just curls a little tighter in the blanket he’s been bestowed with. He’s more than happy to just let the day pass them by in a sleepy haze, with Clint’s hands on him and the sun filtering in soft and warm.  
  
He should’ve expected the crash.  
  
The window to their left shatters with a crack that echos in his ear. Bucky only has a few seconds to realize he’s left his weapons in the bedroom when Clint whips into action, rolling them both to the floor with a quick twist of his thighs so they’re partially protected by the coffee table. Clint’s on top of him, pressed flat against his chest so they’re both covered by the solid wood as much as possible. He peers over Clint’s shoulder and sees a lone robot, green eyes gleaming. It hasn’t spotted them yet, looking the other way, and Bucky squints. There’s the Hydra logo, stark black against the silver metal.  
  
The robot finally looks their way and makes a whirring noise. “ _Winter Soldier,_ ” it booms.  
  
As it notices them, Bucky notices the Glock tucked in the back of Clint’s waistband and grabs at it, pulls it up to the robot. It manages to take two strides toward them before he squeezes the trigger and shoots it directly through the head. There’s a few long seconds where it stands suspended, foot prepared to take another step, and then it sparks and falls to the ground with a heavy _thunk_ that echoes in Bucky’s bones. Clint pushes a few inches off of his chest to turn and squint at it.  
  
“JARVIS, are there any more fucking robots in the Tower?”  
  
 _“There were three in the Penthouse,_ ” JARVIS answers. “ _Miss Romanov has taken care of them. There was also one in Mister Wilson’s bedroom, and four on the common floor. None are active anymore. Scans show there are no more signatures anywhere near the Tower.”  
  
_ “Wonder what the point of nine shitty robots was,” Clint muses. “Then again, it’s not like they had any resources left for more than that.”  
  
“It’s weird,” Bucky agrees, trying to shake off the unease he’d felt ever since he saw the glow of its eyes. He doesn’t specifically _recall_ any robots in Hydra before now, but they’ve had time to move onto new projects since they lost him and then later, Clint.  
  
Speaking of Clint, he’s still pressed up against Bucky, the only gap between them a few inches where Clint’s pulled himself up onto his elbows. Their legs are still tangled together with the blanket and Bucky’s suddenly aware of the way he can feel Clint’s chest against his, the slight shift of his breathing. There are other places he could probably feel too, if he let himself, and he can tell the exact second Clint realizes it too because those blue eyes go a little darker, and they’re close enough he can see Clint’s pupils dilate.  
  
He’s still flooded with adrenaline from the ambush and it would be so _easy_ to just lean up those last few inches and press their lips together, pull Clint down on him fully until he can’t tell where he starts and Clint begins, and it looks like Clint’s considering it too-  
  
“Bucky, JARVIS said you were down here, are you alri-” Steve skids to a halt a few steps away from them. “Oh.”  
  
There’s a few seconds where Bucky thinks about going for it anyway, with Steve still standing there watching them, but Steve coughs like he’s unimpressed and Clint’s expression fades into something flatter. It’s vaguely reminiscent of the way he’d looked before regaining his memories and it’s a little worrying. Bucky had always used that face as a shield and Clint’s doing the same thing, but Bucky’s not sure exactly what he’s trying to protect himself from.  
  
“Mandatory team meeting, let’s go. We need to talk about what’s going on with Hydra,” Steve orders, and Bucky sighs. Clint lifts off of him with ease, holds his hand out to pull Bucky off the ground. Bucky hands back the gun and Clint tucks it away silently, sticks his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t make eye contact with Bucky again.  
  
When they get into the elevator he notices Steve frowning at Clint and Clint’s resulting cringe, but he doesn’t really understand what it’s about or why it’s occurred.  
  
  
  
  
  
“I think I’m going to go to bed in a minute,” Clint announces with a yawn. “Sorry, boys, I’m an old man.”  
  
“Me too,” Bucky agrees and starts looking around for where he’d kicked off his boots. He finds them tucked up next to Sam’s sneakers, starts pulling them on so he doesn’t leave them on the common floor. Just because he’s comfortable doesn’t mean he’s let his guard down.  
  
Steve looks at the clock on the wall and then looks back at where Bucky’s getting up and walking around to Clint’s seat. They’ve been trying to stick to a reasonable sleep schedule without sleeping in or staying up past two in the morning. It’s been mildly successful, but there’s been no reason to stop now they’re staying at the Tower. Steve glances between him and Clint curiously- Bucky had filled him in on bits of what had happened since they’d last seen each other, but he hadn’t really gone into detail about Clint. Mostly because it was Clint’s story and not his, and also because he didn’t feel right talking about it.  
  
“You’ve been staying on Clint’s floor?”  
  
“I’ve been sharing Natasha’s floor- the couches are awful, man,” Sam butts in, somewhat saving him from Steve’s question.  
  
It’s not so much the question itself as it is the expression on Steve’s face, which is somewhere between thoughtfulness and suspicion. Bucky’s not sure whether it’s because he’s staying with Clint instead of Steve or something else, but he has no intentions of changing floors. Especially because he still wakes up with a knife in his hand some days. He never hurts Clint in his half-awake haze, but there’s always a risk his old programming will decide to rear its head with Steve. He can’t be sure. Also, he _wants_ to stay with Clint, practicality aside.  
  
“The spare bedrooms have a nice mattress, though. Soft,” Sam comments when no one else says anything.  
  
“Yeah,” Bucky agrees blandly, glancing at Clint.  
  
He’s purposefully casual with the way he’s leaned back in his chair, socked feet up against the table, but when Bucky raises an eyebrow slightly Clint shakes his head, nearly imperceptible. _Don’t tell him_. They haven't even looked in the spare bedroom yet. Bucky doesn’t really get _why_ they can’t mention it, but maybe it’s one of those future customs he hasn’t quite gotten a grasp of yet. It feels safer, somehow, and it’s a routine they’ve settled into without question. Judging from the look on Steve’s face, though, maybe they shouldn’t have been.  
  
Bucky can’t really bring himself to care that much.  
  
They bid everyone goodnight and head into the elevator, Bucky pressing the button for Clint’s floor even though apparently the computer in the walls can do it for them. He leans up against the side wall with his arms folded and Clint hovers in the direct center of the elevator, the lights casting shadows across his face. Now Bucky is looking, he can see the troubled expression on Clint’s face. It’s not an obvious thing, far from it, but it’s there nonetheless. When the elevator door chimes he catches Clint’s eyes, raises his eyebrow in a question.  
  
“Something wrong?”  
  
“Is Steve jealous?”  
  
Bucky thinks back to the look on Steve’s face. “Hell, I don’t know. Jealous of what? You and me?”  
  
“You said you don’t remember everything about you two and your relationship, but he does,” Clint says as he pauses in the hallway, expression stormy. “He’s going to want to spend as much time with you as he can to make up for the last seventy years. Get your relationship back the way it was before. I don’t- I don’t think he was expecting to have to compete with me for your time.”  
  
“I don’t belong to Steve just because we knew each other before,” Bucky answers with a frown. “I can spend time with both of you.”  
  
“I know you can, but…” Clint sighs, and a pained look flickers over his face. “I don’t want to cause unnecessary drama in the team. I’m not- Tony’s still stuck in bed, Sam’s out of commission. Bruce has gone somewhere, Thor’s off-world. The Avengers need to be a team, and if Captain America is upset because we’re too close, then...”  
  
 _ _I’m not-__ Clint had said before he’d switched gears. He wasn’t _what_ , exactly? From the self-deprecating look in his eyes, it wasn’t anything Bucky would be happy to hear. Clint looks up at his face and Bucky’s fairly sure his displeasure is written all over his face, judging from the cringe. He scratches a hand through his hair and sighs. Something gives Bucky the feeling he’s not going to get through whatever’s going in Clint’s head, but he’s got to make an attempt at least.  
  
“I-” he starts, ready to argue.  
  
“What if we started sleeping in separate rooms? We can do that now we’re not sharing a dinky little safehouse, right,” Clint says with a smile that doesn’t feel like a smile at all.  
  
“Clint.”  
  
“It’ll be fine,” Clint continues. He may as well have his hearing aids out, because he certainly doesn’t hear anything Bucky’s trying to say. Hell, he’s not even letting him get a word in edgeways. “Steve will be happy and you can move to his floor when you’ve gotten more comfortable. It’s all good, we’ve got this. Avengers, right?”  
  
“Clint,” Bucky tries again, but Clint’s already backing up.  
  
“Guest bedroom’s spacious, you’ll like it,” Clint says hurriedly. “I’ll see you at breakfast, yeah? Awesome.”  
  
“Clint, wait-”  
  
Clint’s bedroom door shuts with a note of finality and Bucky sighs. He has no clue what this random bout of panic is about, but clearly he’s just going to have to wait Clint out. There’s no good reason he should have to stay with Steve just because Steve’s missed him- the point of not being Hydra’s puppet anymore meant he should get to _choose_. Bucky slumps against the wall and tries not to be too bewildered. He still wants to spend time with Steve, but Clint is- Clint feels like the only oxygen in the room on bad days, and even on good days he feels like sunlight banishing away the darkness.  
  
And now Clint’s gone all weird and he doesn’t have any time with him.  
  
Bucky opens the door to the unopened guest room and enters it. It’s sparsely decorated, the same as the rest of the floor, with white and grey. The only colour in the room is Bucky himself, the crimson star on his shoulder and the deep blue of his undershirt. The air feels colder here, somehow, and as he unlaces his boots and lays back on the pristine duvet covers, he realizes it’s perfectly safe for him to be sleeping alone.  
  
The problem is, he doesn’t want to be.  
  
  
  
  
  
Natasha says something to Clint that has him laughing, leaning comfortably against the balcony. Natasha doesn’t have quite the same emotional range, but there’s a pleased little smile on her face as she flicks her fingers against his jaw briefly, and she’s _missed_ him, that much is obvious. They look absolutely striking together, two completely different people bound together with blood and flesh and steel. Clint presses his lips to her cheek briefly after she says something and Natasha’s smile widens just a little.  
  
Bucky turns around and sets the coffee cups on the table inside, lets them have their moment. He’d been meaning to have a serious talk with Clint about what exactly the problem was, but it’s nice to see their friendship still going strong. They deserve to have time together too, and he can wait ten minutes. He settles into a chair and tries to blink away the tiredness, the stress of worrying about Clint all night.  
  
It doesn’t really work. He’s got no idea what’s going on and it probably shows.  
  
Steve walks up behind him and Bucky’s already memorized the way his steps sound so he doesn’t bother turning around. He doesn’t sit down next to Bucky, just stands there silently, and Bucky wonders if he’s watching them or watching _him_. Clint’s describing something to Natasha from the way he’s gesturing with his hands, and Natasha’s watching him with faint amusement, the kind you’d feel if you taught your dog a trick. It’s funnier once you know it’s all an act on her part and that she loves him more than life.  
  
“Buck,” Steve starts, and Bucky glances back at him to see a serious expression. There’s the barest hint of worry in his face too, like he’s about to say something he doesn’t want to. That’s concerning. “Did Clint- what did you two do, while you were… away?”  
  
“Mostly murder,” Bucky answers, watches Steve flinch. Oops. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Went to the mall, drank beer. It tastes different from how it used to. Why?”  
  
“You should try the bananas,” Steve says with a bemused smile, and then shakes his head. “Was there… anything else?”  
  
“We went to a museum once,” Bucky offers. “They had videos of you and me. What’s this about, Steve?”  
  
“Did he take advantage of you?”  
  
“Did he- _what_?” Steve looks pained and Bucky gives him an expression that he’s sure is the true embodiment of disgust. “No, he didn’t fuckin’ _take advantage_  of me, he was brainwashed! He barely knew to eat food, at the start. What the fuck, Steve?”  
  
“The way you look at him,” Steve says, like that’s an explanation. “I thought he might have…”  
  
“No,” Bucky answers abruptly, mentally calculating how fast he can get to the elevator. Steve’s just as fast as he is, if not faster, and he’d make that disappointed face if Bucky just avoided him anyway. And anyway, Bucky hates this conversation, he doesn’t hate Steve. Instead Bucky sighs at him, tries to convey exactly how _stupid_ this train of thought is. Steve shifts uncomfortably and he continues, exasperated. “He’s never done anything I didn’t want him to.”  
  
“You’ve been with Hydra for seventy years, Buck. Clint’s just the first person you connected with,” Steve says, and he can tell Steve’s trying to be kind but it’s the exact opposite. It’s exactly the sort of thing he’d expect to hear from Clint himself on a bad day and he clenches his fists in his lap. “You should spend some time with the others, open up your social circle.”  
  
“You know, pal, I’ve just about had enough of people telling me what to do,” Bucky snaps and Steve flinches back. “I don’t like him because he’s the only goddamn option I’ve had- I like him because he’s _Clint_ , and fuck you for thinking he’d take advantage of me and that I’d _let_ him if he did. Aren’t you on a goddamn superhero team with him? I shouldn’t have to tell you he’s not a dick. He’s always tellin’ me how much he respects you and you, what? Accuse him of _manipulating_ me into sex?”  
  
He’s never actually admitted to his massive crush on Clint out loud before now. It’s strange. Steve doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that, and Bucky lets out a frustrated huff, sinks down lower in his chair. He makes the mistake of looking back at where Natasha and Clint are standing, unable to hear them through the soundproof glass. Clint’s talking excitedly about something, waving his hands in the air animatedly. He catches Bucky’s eye through the glass and smiles briefly, lighting up his whole face before he turns back to Natasha again. He’s gorgeous.  
  
Bucky’s chest hurts a little. Steve’s still standing there.  
  
“We’ve never kissed or nothin’,” he says, still watching Clint. “He doesn’t know, don’t worry.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve says, and he does genuinely sound sorry. Bucky’s not sure what part of this he’s actually sorry about, though- Bucky having feelings for Clint or the earlier accusations. His hand pats Bucky’s shoulder briefly, trying to be comforting but missing by a few hundred miles. It would be mean to smack it away. He still wants to.  
  
Clint and Natasha pick that moment to come back inside.  
  
Clint’s eyes land on Bucky and he starts to smile- that is, until he sees Steve’s hand on Bucky and his face drops immediately. He looks down at his shoes instead and that’s when Bucky finally connects the dots. Clint’s worried about _Steve_. His problem is Steve, not anything Bucky’s done or problems about their relationship in general. It’s a relief to realize what’s going on, even as Clint stumbles over an excuse and takes off down the corridor before any of them can stop him.  
  
Natasha gives Bucky a sympathetic look and takes the coffee he’d made for her.  
  
He gives her a smile that probably doesn’t look like a smile at all and takes a sip of his own drink.  
  
Natasha turns her gaze up to Steve, who’s still hovering over Bucky like a looming blond shadow. Her expression goes from thoughtful to calculating, then back to a more neutral stare. Bucky’s reminded of a conversation they’d had about the Black Widow during their time hiding out in the safehouse. _She knows things, even when you don’t tell her, even if you don’t know the thing yourself,_ Clint had said. Bucky gets the feeling Natasha knows things now, too.   
  
“Remember that time we fought Trickshot, Steve? The archer?”  
  
“Yes,” Steve acknowledges, a little reluctantly. “I was hospitalized for a week. Would’ve been in the ground if it wasn’t for Clint’s quick thinking.”  
  
“That was his older brother,” Natasha says flatly. “Charles Bernard Barton. Barney. His only living blood relative- his parents died when they were young. Clint didn’t even hesitate to shoot him when he attacked you.”  
  
There’s a long moment of silence, and then Steve’s hand disappears off his shoulders. Bucky listens to him walk away in the direction of the staircase, and then raises an eyebrow silently at Natasha. He knows about Barney Barton, about the blood and betrayal and years of hurt. About him leaving Clint in a puddle of his own blood in a ditch at the circus. It still wouldn’t have been an easy thing for Clint to do, but she’d avoided the reality of their love-hate relationship like it was nothing. Just to nail in Clint’s loyalty to Steve a little further.  
  
“They need a push or they’ll never get their heads out of their asses,” Natasha says. “It’s the reality of living with oblivious idiots. Please don’t join their ranks, James.”  
  
“I’ll… try not to,” Bucky answers hesitantly.  
  
  
  
  
  
Bucky takes the stairs down to Clint’s floor, because he’s feeling edgy and nervous and being in a metal box doesn’t help his situation. He doesn’t really expect Clint to be there but he’s heading there anyway. Maybe he can just wait the man out- then again, Clint’s got the kind of stubbornness he’s only witnessed before from Steve when he was five feet tall, so that might be a terrible plan on his part. He makes his way down one step at a time and only stops when he hears faint voices coming from the entrance to a floor he thinks might be Natasha’s.  
  
He recognizes the first voice as Clint’s, which would make sense. Of course he’d hide on her floor. Bucky’s just relieved he hasn’t run off into the depths of New York, because there’s no way Bucky would be able to locate him in the hustle and bustle of the city. The sheer amount of people would kill him with stress if he tried. He pushes open the door and is about to round the corner when he registers the second voice, who he’d first assumed would be Wilson.  
  
His assumption is incorrect.  
  
“Clint, I wanted to talk to you,” Steve says, and Bucky ducks back around the wall before either of them can see him. His voice is firm. Bucky prepares to interrupt if it’s more posturing or warning him to stay away. It’s not like Steve has actually asked Clint to keep his distance before now, but Bucky can’t put it past him at this rate.  
  
“Yeah, man, what’s up? Need me to go kick some ass for you, shoot some bad guys? Tony said he was looking for the base that sent out the robots, I can totally handle I-”  
  
“No. It’s about Bucky,” Steve interrupts, cutting off Clint’s increasingly frantic babbling.  
  
“Right,” Clint says, the fake cheer vanishing out of his voice as quickly as it had arrived.  
  
“You two have been close, since you’ve come back from Hydra,” Steve starts. “I thought you’d just found him while travelling- that you were acquaintances making your way back to the Tower together. And when you were close, I was… surprised.”  
  
“Don’t worry, Steve. I’m not going to… get in your way or anything.” A self-deprecating laugh, something he’s only heard on Clint’s worst days and it sends ice straight down his spine. He hopes like hell he’s not going to have to fight Steve for this, because he’d promised himself he wasn’t going to do that ever again. “It’s not like I really measure up against Captain America anyway. You deserve him more than I do.”  
  
“Clint, I-” Steve just sounds concerned. “Where’s all this coming from?”  
  
“You two deserve to have your relationship without me interfering, and it’s fine,” Clint says, and he sounds perfectly calm but it’s almost __too__ calm to be genuine. “I can- I can stay out of it. Avoid him. I can go out, do my own thing and still be on-call if there’s a fight.”  
  
“Clint. Stop.” Steve’s voice doesn’t allow for any argument and the near-frantic babbling stops. “I’m sorry. I was getting upset because I thought you might have taken advantage of him, but that’s my fault, not yours. I get overprotective where Bucky’s concerned- probably too overprotective, and a little obsessed. Sam says it’s normal, but I shouldn’t take it out on you. I know you and you’re a _good person_ , Clint. I know you’re not going to do anything to hurt him.”  
  
“You and Bucky-”  
  
“We have a lot of history and I’d like to be close again,” Steve agrees. “But he’s allowed to have new relationships too. It’s his life, and his choice. He really likes you, Clint. I’m okay with it- and even if I wasn’t, it’s not about _me_. If he’s happy and you’re happy, that’s all that matters. Don’t push him away for my sake.”  
  
“I don’t just want to be his friend,” Clint says flatly, and _wow_.  
  
“I know,” Steve replies.  
  
“Oh.” The silence turns contemplative. Bucky takes a moment to marvel over the knowledge that Clint likes him too, apparently. As more than friends. He’d _hoped_ \- deep down under everything else he’d hoped, thought about the dark intent in Clint’s eyes when he’d been leaning over him the other day and swallowed down the flicker of _want_ , but he’d never actually considered that it could be a reality. “You’re… okay with that?”  
  
“Bucky went out with men when we were younger,” Steve says. “He thought I didn’t know. I’m not a homophobe, Clint.”  
  
“And you’re not…”  
  
“I’m not in love with Bucky. Bucky and I are not romantically involved. We have never been romantically involved,” Steve says, sounding a little exasperated, and Bucky hadn’t even considered the notion that Clint might think that but now, looking back on the things Clint had said, there’s probably a good reason to tell him that wasn’t a thing. “Clint, if you want to step out with him that’s great. I’ve been stupid. Please don’t avoid him.”  
  
“I…” Clint stops after a second. “I should probably apologize to him, yeah?”  
  
“No. This was my bad, Clint,” Steve says. “Why don’t you take him out somewhere nice instead?”  
  
“New York’s too crowded- he’ll get overwhelmed by all the people,” Clint answers immediately.  
  
Bucky’s heart feels like it’s going to expand too much and crack open his ribs. If he dies here because of Clint Barton it’d be a fitting way to go- but then again he can’t die, because Clint cares about him. It’s a simple thing, really, remembering that the noise and masses of people get too abrasive for him, but it’s a reminder that Clint remembers these things _for_ Bucky, because he _cares about Bucky_. He’s been wanting the same way that Bucky has been, when they’ve been sharing a bed and going out for drinks and sharing remembered lifetimes with each other.  
  
“I’ve got a better idea,” Clint adds.  
  
Bucky turns and starts making his way up the stairs, not listening to anything they say because he doesn’t want to ruin whatever plan Clint’s coming up with and also because he feels high off of the delight spreading through his fingertips. Clint _likes_ him. Clint likes him as more than a friend and Steve’s not going to interfere anymore and they can do something about it.  
  
  
  
  
  
“ _Sergeant Barnes _,”__  JARVIS says. “ _Agent Barton has requested your presence on his floor when you are available. _”  
  
__ The robot’s obviously decided not to call him by his codename anymore, which would be a positive except he’s not entirely sure how he feels about ‘Sergeant Barnes’ either. He’s not going to bother to complain about it, though.  
  
“I’m on my way,” Bucky says, swallows down the nerves bubbling up from his stomach.  
  
He’s been hovering around the common floor aimlessly, unable to sit still for more than five minutes, much to Natasha’s amusement. He was trained as a sniper, for god’s sake. He’s sat for twelve hours to line up a shot and take it before. This is stupid. He scowls as Sam snickers at him when he walks to the elevator, shoves his hands in the pockets of his jacket so he doesn’t have to see if they’re shaking. He’s spent so much time with Clint in the last few months and yet the reality of this is absolutely nerve-wracking anyway, something he can’t remember feeling before. Hell, maybe he hasn’t been nervous about this kind of thing before.  
  
He uses his metal hand to poke the button for Clint’s floor, stares up at the ceiling and bites his lower lip. It’s not like they haven’t been alone together before. Hell, they’ve been sleeping in the same bed for a long time, he shouldn’t be nervous at all.  
  
The elevator dings at him cheerfully and he takes one step out into the hallway, stops. Then he thinks _what the fuck am I doing?_ He wants this. Clint wants this. There’s no reason for this anxious bullshit.  
  
He rounds the corner and then stops again.  
  
“Hey,” Clint says.  
  
“Hi,” Bucky returns.  
  
The entire living room’s been renovated- the minimalist decor and uncomfortable furniture are gone, replaced by a leather couch that’s been pushed up against a wall and posters from movies they’ve both liked (the _Terminator_ one makes him snort internally.) The lights have been turned down so there’s just a warm glow, and there’s takeout in boxes on the coffee table; something from a restaurant they’d frequented in their safehouse recovery days. In the middle of it though is Clint, in worn jeans and a hoodie that’s pushed up to his elbows, hair scruffy as always and a rueful little smile on his face.  
  
He takes careful steps closer until he’s in front of Bucky, his smile widening when he sees Bucky accidentally put on one of his shirts this morning.  
  
“I’m sorry I’ve been acting weird,” Clint says quietly, hooking a finger in one of Bucky’s belt loops. “I thought- ugh, fuck, it doesn’t matter. I’m a chronic idiot. You should probably escape while you still can.”  
  
“What if I’m happy where I am?”  
  
“I can work with that,” Clint answers, the sly grin on his face sending Bucky into mild heart palpitations again. “This is going to be really embarrassing if you’re just being friendly, but I’m really into you and I feel like you might be into me but I thought that maybe-”  
  
“I am. Into you,” Bucky interrupts before he goes on a tangent.  
  
It’s not elegant or romantic but Clint’s looking at him like it is, expression bright and delighted in a way Bucky’s only seen him be with his bow. They don’t need to be a fairy tale romance anyway. This is perfect, in its own weird little way. They’ve spent too long dancing around this- it’s a relief just to have it out there, to actually say it and to be able to see it in Clint’s eyes when he tugs Bucky an inch closer so they’re nearly pressed together. It feels like his happiness is actually tangible, wrapping around Bucky like a shawl.  
  
“Natasha thought we were already going out,” Clint comments.  
  
“To be fair, we _were_ basically dating. God knows I’ve bought you enough drinks,” Bucky says dryly.  
  
“You bought all those with money you stole from Hydra,” Clint retorts. “If anything I should be dropping my pants for Alexander Pierce. You think he’d like that?”  
  
“He slapped me once,” Bucky notes. “It wasn’t much fun, he’s an asshole. Please don’t dump me for an old man when we’ve just started stepping out.”  
  
“You _are_ an old man, Barnes,” Clint says fondly, and his mouth is about an inch away from Bucky’s. It’s like they’re planets orbiting around each other without giving a shit about the rest of the solar system, just pulling closer and closer until it’s too late and they’re hopelessly entangled with one another.  
  
“Is this… okay?”  
  
He says the words against Clint’s lips and feels the answering smile rather than sees it. His hands are curved around Clint’s hips, metal thumb against where he knows the tattoo is sitting underneath the thick cotton of his hoodie. Clint’s free hand has gone up to his throat, tugs on a loose strand of dark hair playfully. “That depends. Are you completely sure you’re not harboring a secret lover’s tryst with Steve?”  
  
“Gross. I’m not fucking him. Never did, never wanted to,” he answers, and Clint snorts out a laugh. Bucky’s quietly relieved he hasn’t questioned Bucky’s motives the way Steve had, just trusts him to make his own decisions. It’s part of what he likes about Clint.  
  
“Lies. Everyone wants to fuck Captain America.”  
  
“I’m more interested in Hawkeye, honestly,” he murmurs, as Clint’s fingers twist in his hair to pull him into a proper kiss.  
  
Clint kisses like it’s a reflection of himself; a little frantic but calculated and a little awe-striking, directed purely at driving Bucky insane with how genuinely _nice_ it feels. Bucky yanks him the scant distance between them, holds him there and presses his body flush against Clint’s. Clint’s teeth graze his lip, nip at it playfully and it feels like he has to physically hold back the urge to start shaking from the sensation and never stop. He’s warm under Bucky’s flesh hand, hard muscle and soft smiles and _perfect_ \- something he definitely doesn’t deserve but isn’t giving up for the world.  
  
He’s really in deep here, he muses as Clint pulls back to press a kiss to his jaw, mouthing hot down his neck. The hand on his waist guides him back against the wall and Clint brackets him in, the only kind of trap he’s more than happy to be stuck in. The position has the happy result of slotting their hips more firmly together, Clint between Bucky’s spread knees and when Bucky shifts his weight Clint does a slow, dirty shift that has him making a noise he’s fairly sure he’s never made before in his life.  
  
Bucky’s breath halts in his lungs as Clint bites his neck, hard enough that it would bruise on a normal person. Hell, he’s not sure it _didn’t_ leave a mark on him, and the arousal hits him like a tsunami when he imagines Clint marking him, claiming him. For once he’s not happy about his healing factor. He grabs a handful of Clint’s ass with his right hand, squeezes.  
  
“Fuck, we shoulda been doing this weeks ago,” he gasps, hips jerking automatically and Clint laughs.  
  
“I was going to do cute date things, y’know,” he says, drawing back enough that Bucky can see the way his face is flushed. “Get you the food you like, court the hell out of you and send you to bed with a kiss on the cheek. Be the good guy, prove Steve right.”  
  
“I’m a little concerned with your desire to impress Steve,” Bucky comments, and he still sounds a little breathless.  
  
“Good thing I’m planning on disappointing him immensely tonight,” Clint answers, and Bucky likes what that implies so he drags him back into another kiss, swipes his tongue over Clint’s lip and revels in the soft noise Clint makes. “I care more about getting my hands on you, honestly.”  
  
Bucky’s shirt and jacket end up thrown in a far corner of the room and Clint runs a hand up his bare chest without verbal comment, but his eyes are dark and appreciative. Bucky gets his right hand under the back of Clint’s hoodie, presses his fingers up against the curve of his spine. He _wants_ , god, he wants so bad it claws up his chest and aches in his throat until Clint’s nails scrape over a nipple and he remembers he can have this.  
  
“Bedroom. Clothes off,” he orders and Clint smirks at him but pulls away obediently to head for his bedroom. Their bedroom. Whatever. Bucky follows, and if he spends a few minutes too long staring at his ass, well, he’s allowed to do that now.  
  
Clint’s jeans get unzipped and yanked down within seconds and Bucky watches as they’re flung unceremoniously on the floor. His ( _Bucky’s_ ) hoodie and shirt are treated in much the same manner, and then Clint’s got his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his tight black shorts but Bucky can’t stand not touching him anymore, gets impatient. It feels like he’s been waiting for this for _years_. Clint goes easily when he’s pushed down onto the bed, grins encouragingly and rubs his thumbs over Bucky’s hips as Bucky settles on top of him.  
  
Bucky grinds down automatically and Clint gasps, pulls him down to bite at his lip again. Bucky’s still got his jeans on and the denim is almost painful at this point, but he can’t make himself move away long enough to get them off. The pleasure’s curling up his spine stifling and hot and he can’t stop rubbing up against Clint.  
  
“Thought about this,” Bucky says, and it’s a little _too_ honest.  
  
“God, me too,” Clint answers breathlessly. “So fuckin’ pretty like this, Buck.”  
  
Clint’s picked up on the whole jeans situation too, by the way he worms a hand between them and somehow manages to unzip them with maybe an inch of space. Bucky stops moving just long enough to shove them down with one hand, too desperate to actually put effort into it. Clint wriggles out of his own underwear and the sensation of their dicks against each other without any cloth separating them has Bucky moaning loud, too loud but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters except Clint’s body against his  
  
“What’d you- _oh_ , fuck -think about specifically?”  
  
“Hngh,” Bucky replies, very articulate. He’s fairly sure his brain has just up and left the building entirely. Clint wraps his hand around both their cocks and strokes, the calluses on his fingers catching just right and making Bucky’s brain white out for a second.  
  
“I thought about lots of things,” Clint continues, flushed and unsteady. “I’d dream about having your dick in my mouth, sucking you off ‘til you came and then I’d keep going until you’re shaking and begging me to stop- shit, keep touching me, _please _-__ ’nd I thought about you fucking me hard, god, __Bucky__. _ _”  
  
__ Bucky’s barely got enough active thought to thread his fingers through Clint’s but he does it, lets Clint set the pace and squeezes periodically. He realizes belatedly that it’s the metal hand and considers switching but Clint’s already arching up into the touch and moaning, clearly too messy and turned-on to keep his train of thought. It’s as if he likes the cool metal on his dick- and yeah, Bucky’s not fussy, but Clint _likes_ it. The reaction he gets from Clint is enough to flood Bucky with heat, and he feels like he’s falling from the train again, terrifying and wonderful all at once.  
  
“’m gonna,” he manages to grit out.  
  
“Yeah,” Clint breathes, pupils blown dark. “Come on me, want you to, I-”  
  
Bucky loses whatever else he says as he falls off the edge.  
  
Coming before now was more like an exhale, a release of stress and pressure but this is like running headfirst into a brick wall with the wave of intensity that hits him. It’s something about the reality of Clint, hearing him come undone as well as the feel of his bare thighs, Bucky’s right hand braced on the bare skin of his chest. He’s vaguely aware he’s shaking, gasping brokenly at the ceiling as he keeps moving his hand automatically, sending sparks of _too much not enough_  up his spine as Clint moans.  
  
“Oh, fuck _me_ ,” Clint says fervently, as Bucky shudders.  
  
He must decide to take mercy though, because his fingers slip off of Bucky’s oversensitive cock and fully wrap around his own as he jerks off. Bucky only has the awareness to watch, still buzzing with orgasm but unable to tear his eyes away from the way Clint bites his lip hard. It’s about then that Bucky notices he’s using Bucky’s cum to slick up his fingers and he twitches again, barely refrains from collapsing. Clint nearly lifts Bucky’s knees off the mattress with how hard he arches as he comes with a breathy exhale, much quieter than he’d been the rest of the time.  
  
There’s a beat of silence and then, “I think my last brain cell just left my head.”  
  
Bucky snorts, shifts and feels the wobble in his knees. Clint must pick up on it because he leans up, presses a kiss first to Bucky’s jaw and then to his lips before gently rolling them over, settling Bucky on the mattress and fiddling with his jeans. Bucky goes, pliant and more than happy to let Clint fuss. He doesn’t actually do much fussing, though, just helps him out of his pants and underwear and wipes them off with his own. He tosses the underwear behind him as he clambers back on the bed to snuggle up to Bucky and Bucky wraps an arm around his shoulders, revels in his warmth.  
  
“We’ve got like, weeks of fucking to catch up on,” Clint says dreamily. Bucky rolls his eyes and pretends he isn’t secretly excited about the prospect.  
  
“Rest of forever, right,” he answers and Clint’s delighted smile is all he needs in life, just that.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Wow, Barnes,” Sam says in a deadpan. “Y’all get attacked?”  
  
Bucky gives him a lopsided smirk that feels immensely smug even to him and gently nudges Clint into a chair. Clint sits down gingerly, looking a little dazed until Bucky slides the large mug of coffee in front of him. The accelerated healing factor meant that Bucky only got to enjoy the marks that had been left for a few minutes before they’d faded, but Clint’s had stayed. And there was a lot there. They’d woken up and immediately gotten to working down that list of things to do, much to Bucky’s joy. He’d never seen anyone suck dick quite as enthusiastically as Clint, and the way he’d looked with Bucky’s fingers in him was downright glorious.  
  
Sam looks at the damage for a few minutes before he snorts, mostly to himself than at them.  
  
“Attacked by a sexy mop,” Clint mumbles into his coffee.  
  
Bucky swats him. “I’m not a fuckin’ mop. Show some respect for the guy you’re sleeping with.”  
  
“Oh? Finally got there, did you?” Natasha sweeps into the room without fanfare, sits down next to Sam. She doesn’t look particularly surprised, but then why would she be? It’s not like Clint was a particularly subtle person and Bucky himself certainly hadn’t been subtle about the way he’d felt. He’s fairly sure he has a neon sign blaring exactly how much he likes Clint Barton displayed over his head. He sits down next to Clint and hooks his bare foot around Clint’s ankle comfortably. Clint sighs and leans into him, still half-asleep and dazed, and Bucky runs a hand through his hair gently. Natasha watches them with a knowing little smile.  
  
“So is this like, a sex thing or…?”  
  
Clint doesn’t seem inclined to do anything but doze on Bucky’s shoulder, so he answers Sam’s question. “Nah, ‘s not about fucking. Nice perk, though.”  
  
“I think I died and went to heaven by mistake,” Clint mumbles.  
  
“There’s no Starbucks in the afterlife,” Natasha reasons, gets a groan in return. “Or receive new stealth hearing aids from Stark.”  
  
Clint makes an interested _hrm _?__ noise but doesn’t answer otherwise, and Bucky snorts. The ones he’s been wearing have taken a lot of wear and tear in the time they’ve spent together, and sometimes Clint doesn’t quite know what he’s said. It’s nice that Stark’s gone out of his way to make replacements even when he’s been on bedrest for the last week. Bucky hadn’t been able to tell if Tony Stark was a good person or a bad one based on what Steve had said, but considering he’s letting them all stay here, Bucky’s not looking the gift horse in the mouth.  
  
“ _Miss Romanov, Sir would like to speak with you. He says he has information on the robot attack a few days ago.”  
  
_ “That’s my cue,” Natasha says, standing up.  
  
“I don’t even understand how they got past Stark’s security,” Sam says as she’s walking away. “Doesn’t he have precautions for this kind of thing?”  
  
“They were Hydra robots. SHIELD probably had some of the details on the Tower’s security, they’ve been here a lot,” Clint says.  
  
Bucky thinks about glowing green eyes, pushes down the unease. Suddenly he’s assaulted with flickers of memories, barely there long enough for him to register- _green lights, a fat, sweaty face peering at him over round glasses, the cold press of the mouthguard on his lips and the crack of a hand slapping him across the face, the bile in his throat_ -and he blinks, hand stopping on Clint’s hair. Sam obviously notices something’s wrong because he’s looking at Bucky with faint apprehension as he adjusts his sling. Bucky shakes his head to clear it before he opens his mouth.  
  
“Zola’s been making a body,” he says, and every window on the floor shatters.  
  
The alarm goes off immediately, blaring so loud Clint rolls off of him and onto the floor with a full-body cringe, although he’s already drawing his gun. They’re all in their pajamas still and even armed they’re at a major disadvantage. Bucky flips the table as cover with a heft of his left hand and a bang, glances back to make sure Sam’s alright. He’s also got a gun in his hand, which is a relief. Even with a broken arm he looks ready to fight, which gives Bucky some sense of security. They crouch behind the table, waiting for the first inevitable shots.  
  
Nothing happens.  
  
“Was that it?”  
  
“Maybe something distracted them,” Clint mutters as none of them move from their positions. “Or they finally realized annoying us is a waste of time and they’ve left to go see a movie instead.”  
  
Bucky edges to the side of the dining table and peers around at the space where the large windows had been. There’s a few buildings obscuring his view of the sky and the sounds of shouting below- likely people who saw the windows shatter. He hopes no one got hit too badly by the glass shards. There’s no robots anywhere to be seen though, which is more concerning than he’d expect. He’s just about to turn and tell Clint and Sam to start going for the elevator when he hears the faint hissing.  
  
“There’s gas coming from somewh-” he starts to say as he glances back at them, breaks off when he realizes they already know.  
  
Sam’s already sliding the rest of the way to the floor. Bucky swallows past the nausea and makes eye contact with Clint, who’s yanked his shirt up over his nose. That should protect him from whatever it is for a few minutes- it doesn’t seem to be affecting Bucky at all, the gas was probably created with normal humans in mind and not supersoldiers. Clint’s still got his gun in one hand, but he holsters it in favour of holding his hands up in a signal that means he’s about to start signing. Bucky’s immensely grateful he’d started learning when they’d been away from the Tower.  
  
 _We’ve got to get him out of here. And us too, preferably,_ Clint signs. _Fast.  
  
_ _Power’s still on. Elevator?  
  
_ _Can you cover us while I take Sam?  
  
_ Bucky’s about to argue and then he sees the way Clint’s knuckles are white with how hard he’s fisted his hand in Sam’s shirt. The gas is already affecting him and he knows it, probably can’t protect Bucky accurately if he carries Sam. Bucky grits his teeth against the fear Clint’s going to get hurt and nods tightly. He gets the feeling Clint would be giving him that sort-of sad smile right now if his face was uncovered, and raises his gun to point it at the space where the window had been. There’s now two shitty-looking Hydra robots hovering there like sentries and he breathes, shoots them both. Clint manages to heft Sam up over his shoulders and starts heading for the elevator behind him.  
  
Bucky takes a few steps back, glances over his shoulder to keep an eye on Clint as he shoots the next one that arrives. It falls to the ground with a bang that echoes through his spine and he wonders what the purpose of this invasion is. If they’d had a serious plan to destroy the Tower they would’ve brought more robots. It’s more like a mild distraction, like they’re trying to stall for something.  
  
“Bucky! Let’s __go__ ,” Clint shouts through the fabric of his shirt. The elevator’s open with emergency lights glowing, Clint’s fingers on the buttons ready to push. Bucky breaks into a run to get to them, the dread slipping up his spine. _Something’s wrong.  
  
_ The sudden explosion throws Bucky sideways into a wall. He hits the reinforced steel hard, drops to a crouch and grits his teeth past the pain lancing through his spine. A few ribs might have cracked from the impact, but it doesn’t matter when they’ll be healed soon. He can breathe through it and keep moving. He stands up gingerly and sees the rubble barring him from the elevator, grimaces. There’s no way he can dig through that, even with the metal arm. Of course.  
  
“ _Bucky_ ,” Clint yells.  
  
“I’m okay,” he calls back. “Get up to Stark and Romanov, I’ll take the stairs.”  
  
His voice doesn’t tremble at all, perfectly calm, which is impressive when he can hear too-heavy footsteps advancing on him from behind. His hand grips his gun tight, too tight but not tight enough to banish the mix of fear and anticipation as he waits for the elevator to start moving before he turns around. The robot is much more advanced than the others and about twice the size, clothed in a black trench coat. Bucky registers that it’s lacking a head a few seconds before it uses giant steel hands to peel back the coat and reveal the screen on its chest.  
  
“Winter Soldier _ _,”__ Zola greets, the green glow of his face making Bucky want to vomit. “Time to come home.”  
  
Instead he snarls and launches himself at the robot, swinging his fist directly at the screen. He’s miscalculated the damage the explosion had caused him, though, because he’s just a fraction too slow and the robot blocks him. He swings with the other fist instead, dents a shoulder plate but doesn’t cause anywhere near enough damage. His ears are still ringing and he pauses just long enough for Zola’s robot to kick him, booting him hard enough that he’s hitting the wall again and bouncing off, breathing hard.  
  
“Желание,” he starts, and it echoes down to Bucky’s bones. The heavy metal fist grabs him by the throat, holds him against the wall. “Семнадцать. Ржавый. Рассвет.”  
  
Bucky claps his hands over his ears. “ _Shut up _.__ ”   
  
“Печь. Девять. Добросердечный. Возвращение на родину. Один.”  
  
He kicks at the robot’s torso as the fist closes tighter, cutting off his air. He’s relieved for a moment as he thinks that maybe Zola’s had enough, maybe he’ll just kill him, but the choke isn’t quite tight enough for that. Zola’s not going to kill him. He’s going to do much worse than that. Bucky looks up at the ceiling and thinks about the morning he’d spent with Clint. He’d promised Clint the rest of forever and he was going after one night.  
  
 _I’m so sorry,_ he thinks, choking on the robot’s hand and his own despair.  
  
“Товарный вагон.”  
  
It lets go of him.  
  
“Я готов отвечать,” the Asset answers.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Isn’t it beautiful,” Zola says, and it’s not really a question. “My creation. My immortal form, for all to witness.”  
  
The robot walks to the old computer drive and plugs itself in with a mass of yellow wires. The Asset stands, waiting for further instruction without comment. He doesn’t have anything to say. An operative in a white coat rushes over and begins typing on the computer hurriedly before stepping back. After a moment Zola’s face fades from the robot’s torso and appears in the battered, dusty monitor. He regards the Asset silently for a moment and then beams, apparently satisfied with what he sees.  
  
“Soon I will be able to transfer myself into it forever,” he continues. “A body stronger than even Captain America instead of this dingy computer they managed to rescue me on. I will be unstoppable. Deathless. It will truly be a triumph- Schmidt was a failure, a man who rushed progress. I do not make the same mistakes he had. My success is inevitable.”  
  
“What is my mission?”  
  
“Well, Soldier-”  
  
“Sir, there’s been sightings of the Avengers in the area,” an operative says, looking nervous. The Asset ignores her.  
  
“The people who claim to be your friends are coming for you,” Zola says thoughtfully. “They do not seem to understand that you are mine. But I have learned from Pierce’s mistakes. You, keep Captain America out of the building. Make decoys, use a freeze ray, sacrifice yourselves, I do not care. Keep him occupied.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” the woman says as she scuttles away.  
  
“Soldier. You will protect me,” Zola instructs. “Oh- do not use guns, there is a lot of precious technology here to lose. You have your knives?”  
  
“Yes,” the Asset answers simply, pulls one out of his boot. The sleeve of the clothes he's in are restricting his arm so he rips it off, stands with his back to Zola’s machine so he can watch for people intending to harm the computer. There aren’t any more operatives left in the basement floor of the Hydra base, just the Asset standing in the center of the room facing the stairs to the surface. He turns the knife through the fingers of his left hand, preparing. Waiting to complete his mission. Something explodes overhead, vibrating through the ground. The Asset remains still.  
  
He’s not prepared for the metal grate near his head to be kicked out.  
  
It hits him hard in the side of the head and he twists, rolling out of the way as a man drops out of the vent in a blur of purple and black, almost too fast for a human. He comes out of his crouch as the man looks at him. There’s a bow and quiver of arrows strapped to his back- _hey, you want a go? I can teach you, we’ll be bow bros _-__ and the Asset registers faintly that this is an Avenger. Hawkeye. He looks sad, for some reason the Asset can’t discern.  
  
“Bucky,” Hawkeye says. “Baby, we gotta take you home.”  
  
“I don’t have a home,” he says.  
  
Hawkeye smiles at him but it’s still sad. “Yeah, you do. I’ll show you once I’ve destroyed Zola’s ass for taking you away, alright?”  
  
“Kill him, Soldier,” Zola orders.  
  
His mission. Hawkeye plans to destroy Zola and he has been ordered to protect. He has to eliminate the threat. The Asset strikes, stabbing at the man. Hawkeye dodges away from his first thrust, blocks the second with his arm braced against the Asset’s wrist in a surprising show of strength. As they continue fighting it’s evident the man doesn’t have any interest in harming the Asset, with the way he’s just deflecting blows. It lets the Asset get more than a few blows in, none of them doing enough to effectively drop Hawkeye.  
  
He punches him in the stomach with his flesh hand instead of the metal, and as Hawkeye doubles over he twists over the Asset, holding them flush together as his hands reach for the arm. He can feel the rough texture of armour through the holes in the back of his shirt. There’s an uncomfortable click and then the Asset stabs him in the thigh, twists hard. Hawkeye hisses in his ear, pained- _clear blue eyes, nearly violet in the right light, he’s got a bruise in the shape of teeth in his shoulder _-__  but doesn’t stop what he’s doing.  
  
The arm deactivates with a whine and the Asset is pulled off-balance by the sudden dead weight. He grabs at the hand with his right hand, twists and hears the crunch of bones. Hawkeye staggers back, the knife still in his leg. He doesn’t even look back as he turns towards Zola, hands clenched into tight fists as he takes a few wobbly steps. Even with the screaming that’s echoing in his head and the arm dead, it’s easy for the Asset to catch up with him, push him up against the wall. Hawkeye’s head hits it with a thunk and the Asset reaches down with his right hand, grabs the knife and _yanks_ it out.  
  
“Bucky,” Hawkeye mumbles, nearly inaudible.  
  
The screaming gets louder.  
  
He stabs.  
  
The Asset slams the knife into the wall a few inches above the blond man’s ear, frowns. This doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t miss. The man’s still staring at him with wide blue eyes, apparently just as bewildered as the Asset is. He turns his head and looks at his right hand, still holding the knife and sees delicate black lines curling around his skin, lines that shouldn’t be there but-  
  
 _-the heavily inked woman rubs a thumb over the skin of his wrist and makes a ‘hrm’ noise in the back of her throat. The needles had barely stung in their trail down his skin and he’d felt the skin healing over almost immediately, but that doesn’t make it any less weird for the artist trying to tattoo him. Bucky tries not to look too awkward as she turns her suspicious stare onto his face. It’s not actually his fault that he’d been pumped full of supersoldier serum seventy years ago. She looks back down at the completely healed, perfect lines of the tattoo and then shrugs, goes to put away the aftercare cream she’d picked up.  
  
_ _Clint leans forward eagerly. “So, you gonna show it to me now?”  
  
_ _Bucky lifts his wrist silently to show off the delicate black lines.  
  
_ _“A flower?”  
  
_ _“Daffodil,” Bucky informs him.  
  
_ _Clint looks faintly puzzled for a moment as he reaches out to touch the edge of one petal, and then his clear eyes light up with realization. “Daffodils mean rebirth.”  
  
_ _“A new beginning,” Bucky agrees.  
  
_ _Clint grins, heartbreakingly beautiful. Bucky wants to kiss him. “It’s perfect.”  
  
_ Hawkeye slides to the ground slowly in front of him, eyes sliding shut as he bleeds all over his pants, the wall, the white tiles of the floor.  
  
“Good job, Asset,” Zola says. “Now, initiate the locking sequence for me. It needs input. We will wipe you afterwards and you will be free again.”  
  
He turns around and approaches the computer on its pedestal. There’s still fighting echoing down from above, explosions and bangs and screaming- likely from the Hydra operatives. He stops in front of the old computer terminal, looks it over. There’s only one hard drive connected to the monitor, a heavy thing that reaches past his knees. A space for a password appears below Zola’s chin, and he stops. He looks down at the tattoo on his wrist, remembers thinking about symbols of a past and humanity.  
  
“I’m going to kill you for good,” Bucky says.  
  
“Back already, are we? Usually it takes longer,” Zola says. “I am the only one who understands you, Soldier. Your little friends won’t want anything to do with you when they find out what you’ve done.”  
  
“I told them. They don’t care. That only worked for the first few years,” Bucky replies. He finds the loose plate where Clint had deactivated the arm, flicks a switch and pushes a button before it whines back to life. Then he flexes it where he knows Zola can see, watches the nerves flicker over his computerized face. Zola can’t do anything. He’s a sitting duck, like this, and he’ll never get the code words out in time to save himself.  
  
“You’re the Winter Soldier,” Zola spits. “You really think you can just _be_ Bucky Barnes after the things you’ve done?”  
  
“I’m going to be _both_ , you fuck,” Bucky snarls as he punches his fist through the computer. It goes through like the mainframe is nothing, no match for the weapon they’d made. Sparks fly and the screen with its green light that doesn’t seem so scary anymore blinks dangerously once, twice. Zola’s face contorts in front of his face and he looks __scared__ , scared the way Bucky had been when he’d been pumped with drugs and pain and innocent blood.  
  
Scared the way he’d been for __seventy goddamn years__.  
  
“-ou ca- still- fix this, Asset,” Zola says, and the static’s roaring in his ears.  
  
"I am fixing it. I'm not yours anymore." Bucky wraps his hand around a fistful of wires and _yanks _.  
  
__ The sound cuts off abruptly and he stares at his reflection in the now-black screen. There’s no more noise from the computers, and he swallows hard. He’s still holding the handful of wires, and the feedback from the arm informs him some of the sparks are still hitting it. He feels frozen. Zola’s dead. Zola’s dead for _good_ this time and he’s free.  
  
“That was anticlimactic,” Clint says, and his voice sounds like sandpaper.  
  
Bucky drops the wires immediately and twists around to see him. Clint looks like death walking the earth, pale-faced and limping, holding his broken wrist protectively against his chest, but he’s grinning at Bucky like none of it matters whatsoever. He’s an _idiot_. He could’ve died. Bucky almost killed him, would have killed him if the tattoo hadn’t thrown him off-balance. Once he gets within reach Bucky grabs at him, pulls Clint into his arms and breathes out shakily against his hair. He’s painfully beautiful and Bucky _loves_ him, god. He loves him so much.  
  
“I love you,” he says, the frantic desperation evident in his voice.  
  
He… hadn’t actually meant to say that out loud.  
  
“Fuck, I love you too,” Clint replies instantly, sounding delighted.  
  
“-wait, really?”  
  
“You’re an idiot,” Clint says as he pulls him into a brief kiss that tastes like blood, and isn’t that supposed to be _his_ line? “I was in love with you when you got me that goddamn bow.”  
  
“Oh,” Bucky says, because there isn’t much of a reply to that. Clint _loves_ him. “You… want me to carry you to medical?”  
  
“I’d appreciate that,” Clint says wearily, and his face is composed but he’s leaning nearly all of his weight on Bucky. He chooses that moment to completely pass out and Bucky catches him easily, scoops Clint up into his arms. When Bucky looks up from his face Natasha’s standing there waiting for him, a little half-smile on her face as she gestures to the stairs. _Steve’s waiting,_ she mouths at him before she turns and heads up with a quiet click of heels.  
  
Bucky glances back at the electronic remains of Zola. There’s this warm feeling building up in his chest that’s more than the satisfaction of murdering him because he _proved Zola wrong_. He’s got friends, a boyfriend, and they all know what he’s done and trust him nonetheless. He’s not a machine. He’s not a mindless murderer.  
  
He’s Bucky Barnes, and yeah, he’s the Winter Soldier too, but above all that he’s a _person_.


End file.
